


Nor even ashes

by ShadowstarKanada



Category: ReBoot (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Ending, Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:42:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21951652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowstarKanada/pseuds/ShadowstarKanada
Summary: They say a wedding is the happiest day of a young sprite's life. Whoever they are... they're wrong.
Relationships: Bob/Dot Matrix (ReBoot), Dot Matrix/Megabyte (ReBoot)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 8





	1. A beautiful disaster

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure about how much tagging of warnings I should do because I haven't written anything for somewhere over ten years, but hear this: this is a story where Megabyte marries Dot. There are no explicit rape or sex scenes in this work, and it's not referenced as rape, which seems odd to me since I'm tagging with n/c, old school me says “but it's not that genre”... still, the whole premise implies rape, and ongoing rape at that. It's shocking to me that they put even the possibility of this into a kid's show (even if it was a bit more adult by the time it got to season 4). As stated above, characters will die.
> 
> The story will dovetail into the Guardian Code, probably because I'm a bit crazy, but I'm not enough of a masochist to watch that whole show so pretty much it's just referencing the ep when Megabyte gets pulled from Mainframe and that one episode where they go into Mainframe and everyone's totally out of character and they've forgotten about the whole universe outside of Hex and the TIFF... Uh. Anyways.
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

This story starts with a wedding. Perhaps the most beautiful celebration in Mainframe.

For one young sprite, it's the happiest second of her life. And if it is tinged heavily with desperation, a grasping for a single constant variable in a world that's been filled with too much upheaval of late... well, she's still happy and nothing can change that. She's tired of making so many choices that turn out to be the _wrong_ choice, and this choice? It cannot be wrong. It is a choice that was taken out of her hands, but one she thinks she would have made regardless.

Her dress is white and beautiful. Her friends stand by her side. Her family is finally together. Her father, back from nullification, will give her to her new husband, which she might say is a bit of a strange sort of idea, except that, having temporarily lost so many of the men in her life, she's content to bask in the unexpected tradition of it all. Her brothers happily watch her marry a man that she has loved and lost and loved and lost and loved again.

Bob is there, standing at the end of the aisle, a soft smile on his face in his dress uniform. He looks sharp, and perfect, as though he stepped out of her fondest memories, the time before she had to step up and be the last line of defense in the system. His blue skin, his silver hair, the voice that has _always_ managed to coax a smile out of her, even when she was completely overworked or too angry to want to smile... her eyes meet his from the back of the venue, and the encouraging sparkle helps her nerves to settle as she and her father start walking.

The hall is gorgeous. Cecil has made it beautiful, a wedding planner she'd never really anticipated having, and she has a note in her organizer to remind her to give him more leeway in decorating the Diner. She walks down the beautifully appointed aisle, smiling at binomes and sprites who have turned up for the wedding. For _her_ wedding to _him_. The Guardian from the Supercomputer, and the sprite from Mainframe. They've always been perfect for each other, even if they haven't always known it, and the look in his eyes matches hers.

And soon enough, Phong is saying all the right words for the ceremony. And she does, she really, really _does_. And her new husband smiles, and says "of course I do" and there is no interrupt to bother either of them. It's as soft as her life has been hard. It's perfect in a way that she hasn't had for a very long time.

And if there's a moment between one nano and the next during the kiss where something feels off as his eyes narrow slightly, no one notices because everything is right with the world.

Dot is finally, _truly_ happy, in a way she didn't dream. She doesn't need a plan to know that a life with Bob is what she wants, because she has wanted it for such a long time.

This story starts with a wedding. Truly, the most beautiful disaster in Mainframe.


	2. A Game of Spies

“Goooooood morning Mainframe! This is not a test, this is the wake up alarm of the second with your host, Mike the TV!”

There was a grumbling beside her. “Mike! Go snooze somewhere!”

"This program sponsored by Mrs React: a leading provider of quality cookies."

"Mike, I'm warning you..." Bob didn't quite sit up, but his eyes were intently fixed on the noise maker in the room.

Mike grinned. "In internetional news today, the Guardian Collective is sponsoring a series of instructional videos on— oh!" There might not be a remote, but Bob had long since figured out ways to quiet his television, and throwing the remains of an energy shake at the loudspeaker was certainly one way to do it.

“Oh, Mike...” Dot opened her eyes a little unwillingly as the remoteness television's light footsteps made a pattering sound as he raced out of the room. "Tell me why we took your TV again?" Bob groaned, and she sighed, looking at the plain white ceiling above them, a far cry from the fancy hotel by the Data C they'd stayed in for the last minute. “I suppose the honeymoon really is over,” she said, turning to look at the blue sprite beside her.

“Yeah, I guess so.” The back of his hand brushed down her cheek, then changed to a scolding sort of point. “But don't pretend you didn't spend the last three seconds planning out everything you're going to do back in the Principle Office.” Bob grinned fondly at her, and Dot laughed a little.

“No! Well...” She sat up and gently pulled him in for a kiss. “Maybe one? Don't you have anything that needs to get done, Guardian?”

“You know me, I like taking things as they come, living on the edge... Butto tell you the truth, I can think of a thing or two I need to get done right now, Mrs Matrix,” he said, moving closer with a lascivious smile.

She giggled— _giggled_ , who would ever think the stern Dot Matrix would _giggle_ — and pushed him away. “None of that! We should both get to the Principle Office. Mouse needs to brief me before she goes off with that Surfer, and I'm sure that Matrix would appreciate having you back on the job. And _you_ probably need to report to Turbo before you go back on duty, but... I don't want to tell you how to do your job.”

She grabbed her icon off a side table and stood, letting the bedsheet fabric slide off of her body. She thought a moment and booted herself into her old clothes, from before the web wars. She examined it for a moment, it was both strange and familiar to be in her old clothing. She wasn't entirely sure she liked the effect of the colors against her skin. It made her look a little bit washed out.

“Feeling a little nostalgic? That black outfit's definitely better looking on you... maybe you should go with that black and white one, from when we got those PIDs from Megabyte in Floating Point?” He laughed a little as she changed and examined herself, then nodded. “Oh, don't change on my account. I think that looks better on you, but no matter what you wear, I'm glad you're mine,” said Bob, hugging her from behind as his uniform downloaded onto him.

He walked them both toward the bathroom and grabbed a toothbrush. Dot did the same, and the pair got ready for the day. “Anyway,” said Bob after spitting toothpaste into the sink, “You're right. Mouse needs to get going, and Matrix probably needs some attention. Not to mention, he and AndrAIa are probably overloaded with taking care of Enzo.” Dot nodded a little reluctantly at that, and Bob tilted his head, lifting an eyebrow. “What?”

Dot looked into Bob's eyes in the mirror for a moment, contemplatively.

“I'm really glad my father's alive,” she said after a moment. “And able to communicate. It's just... coparenting with a null in an exoskeleton is somehow more challenging a thought than raising him alone. Should I even _be_ parenting him? But I don't think my dad can keep up with a little sprite like Enzo, not the way he is.”

“You knew where you stood, before.” Bob nodded. “I guess it can be hard to adapt to big changes, but you know what? You're Dot Matrix. You'll figure out where you are, make a plan to get to where you want to be. It's not _that_ different. The User Reboot of the system—"

“Can we... _not_ talk about that? I...” He looked at her, once more with a questioning look in his eyes. “I still just don't like thinking of that time. Any of it. You were gone, and Enzo was gone, and viruses owned the system, and Megabyte...” She shivered, and Bob moved his hands up to knead her shoulders.

"He's gone now. Him and Hex both."

"I know. He still scares me, though. Even the memory of him— what he did to Phong, the indiscriminate destruction..."

"He should have had someone like you on his side. He'd probably have extracted more from the system, and it wouldn't have crashed." There was a look on his face, a grin, that Dot didn't like at all.

Dot gave Bob a sharp look. "That's not _funny_."

Bob raised his hands placatingly. “I'm sorry. Look, I get it. Sometimes you just wish everything was like it was back then. Before.” She shook her head slightly, clearly there were things she liked about now, but... “Dot. I'm here now.” He kissed her hair and drew her closer to him. “And I'm not going to leave you again.”

He began to kiss her, but broke it off as a familiar chime sounded. “Warning, incoming game.”

“Oh, User. Great timing!" He looked out at the system in annoyance. "I guess you're right, it's back to work. I _have_ to go. But it won't be for long!”

Dot reached up and pulled him down for a last kiss. “Promise?”

“I promise.” He let go of her reluctantly, then opened up a zip board. It would be faster to go out the window. “I'll meet you at the PO later. We can have lunch?”

Dot nodded. “I'll be waiting!” She waved as he flew off, then sighed. There was an ache in her heart as she headed for the Principle Office. She missed him already.

* * *

Matrix waved as he noticed Bob heading over to meet him under the dropping cube. “Hey Matrix. Where's AndrAIa?”

“Keeping little Enzo from coming in the game,” came the reply. “I hope you and Dot had a great time. It'll be nice to have some company in the games again. Keeping Enzo out is a full time job, so," Matrix nodded at the dog beside him, "only Frisket's been coming in with me, lately.”

“I guess I've missed playing the games. And Dot's happy to be getting back to business.”

“Same old Dot,” said Matrix affectionately as the purple walls came down around them. The tall towers and busy sounds of Wall Street were replaced by soft, soothing music and what seemed to be a mostly open-airrooftop garden party. They were clearly still in a city: the sounds of cars filtered up from streets below. “All right... Reboot!”

“Reboot!” The pair looked around at the setting and their new forms.

Bob sat in a powered wheelchair, his legs strapped down onto it so that he couldn't stand up. By his side was a cup of coffee, which he picked up and sniffed before crinkling his nose in distaste.

Matrix wore a pink cowboy outfit, and he batted at the tassles on his costume with some distaste, while Frisket growled and tried to pull off the vest that proclaimed him a "Working Dog: Do Not Pet!"

“So this is some sort of party...?" asked Bob. "I don't think I've seen this game before. You?”

Matrix frowned and pulled at the strange little tie around his neck. In some ways, his outfit looked a lot like what he'd worn for the wedding, though in a much brighter color, so maybe it wasn't entirely unexpected that he was going to have some trouble with fidgeting in the uncomfortable outfit. “I'm not sure either. It must be something new,” he said. Matrix patted down his clothes. “No weapons, no power ups, no health. Maybe it's a non-violent game? Like...” Matrix shuddered exaggeratedly. “Mini-golf.”

Bob laughed. “Ah, come on, golf's almost as fun as pool. Vector geometry in action."

"Hmph. Maybe it's fun the _first_ dozen games..."

Bob rolled his eyes and checked for any equipment of his own. "No weapons, but I do apparently have this.” Bob pulled a small tablet out of his pocket. “Hm. Get the papers from the office, dead drop at the garden gnome, poison the old lady.” He shrugged and looked at the list. “Well, at least I have some objectives.”

Matrix nodded. “Huh. Wish I had one of those. But I think I _do_ see the User. Look over there.” Bob squinted in the direction the large green sprite was pointing, but shook his head. “See that glint on the balcony three stories up? Definitely a sniper.”

Bob looked over. The buildings were pretty far away, but not so far as one might expect for a real sniper. Still, hard enough to notice. “Ah, I see it now. Good eye,” replied Bob. “Well, no point prolonging this. I'll just go do these objectives.”

“Not so fast— I think the goal is to blend in. Look at the all the game sprites. If that User _is_ a sniper, I bet he's supposed to shoot the person with instructions.” Matrix turned and grinned. “That is, you!”

“Oh, great.” Bob took a sip of his coffee while Matrix grinned and took a champagne flute from a table. “Well, I guess we'd better blend in, then.” He looked at Matrix with a sly grin. "Let's mingle!"

* * *

Mouse's eyes lifted from the data pad as Dot walked into the Principle Office, giving her hellos to Phong and Specky before walking around the main input circle. “Welcome back, Sugar. Was the honeymoon as sweet as you hoped?”

“It really was.” Dot smiled for a moment, then shook herself. “I'd almost rather still be on it. But I needed to get back. We still don't have a good idea of what side effects Hex's fragmentation and viral cure might have had, which means the system needs to stay on at least a partial alert status. Not to mention the archives." Dot looked sternly at her friend. "Did you put the file locks back on like I asked?”

“Of course, Dot. If I'd known what Bob was going to do...”

"You couldn't have known," Dot said consolingly. "Glitch-Bob didn't tell anyone his plans. If we'd _known_ what he was planning, we wouldn't have let him release that tear." Dot looked down for a nano, then shook her head. "Well, there's no use to assigning guilt." She pressed a few buttons on her organizer and skimmed a quick overview of the system stats. "Thanks for keeping an eye on everything while I was gone, Mouse. I really appreciate it."

"What are friends for?" Mouse looked at her critically for a moment. “You know, Sug, if I didn't know better, I'd say you spent your whole honeymoon working. You look a little desaturated.”

“Oh? Well, I guess... I didn't sleep as much as I should have.” Dot shrugged, then, as Mouse raised an eyebrow and a corner of her mouth, blushed in embarrassment at the implication. "That's not what I meant! Mike came in and woke us this morning, and it felt like my head had barely hit the pillow. I was probably thinking too much about everything that needs to get done today."

“All work, no play, Dot? You _do_ know you don't need to be like that with me, right?”

Dot looked around the room meaningfully, as Mouse noted that it was a little quieter than it ought to be. “Y'all have work to do!” She scolded, then shrugged. Maybe a heart to heart just wasn't to be. “Well, come on, Dot, let me show you everything in the newsfeed.”

Dot grinned. This really was a part of her function, and she revelled in knowing exactly what was in the logs, but as Mouse spoke, she found herself thinking back to her honeymoon. How she'd lain beside her new husband, how he'd laughed at the idea that she’d scheduled her downtime so carefully. Her fingers tapped idly to the rhythm of a song they'd danced to, remembering how his eyes had become the entire net to her...

She looked quizzically at Mouse as a two-part chime sounded in the PO. “What was that?”

“I installed an upgrade or two,” said Mouse with a wink. “You'll find them all in the readme, but that one is like that ringer you have in the diner, tells you when someone enters or exits the system via a portal.”

“I take it Ray is here?” Her fingers tapped a moment as she verified that the new entrant to the system really _was_ Ray while Mouse grinned, then turned. “Oh, _Mouse_ , I'm going to miss you...”

“Half of my heart will be here with you in Mainframe, Honey.” Mouse smiled apologetically, “but you always knew I'd have to get going once all the viral issues were cleared up. But... if you and Bob have a little sprite, you make sure that you invite me for the shower, you hear?”

Dot nodded. “Of course.”

“And don't forget, you've got AndrAIa now. She's grown into a good woman, and a good friend.”

"Oh, I know she's a good woman, but..." Dot shrugged ruefully. "There's something a little strange about talking about... _things_... with a sprite you had to act as a mother to..."

“Aw, Sugar, I just want you to remember to be her friend, like you've been mine. Now.” She grabbed Dot and pulled her into a hug. “It's been amazing watching you grow into the commander of the troops. I really do think Phong will pass full leadership over to you sooner or later— if you don't just stage a hostile takeover first.”

"Mouse, I would never— the system is entirely different from my businesses!"

"Of course, Dot. I didn't mean anything by it." Mouse shook her head. Sometimes, that sprite had herself bound up too tight to take a joke. She decided to change the subject; after all, there was still one thing they needed to discuss. “Listen. I mentioned Turbo's call already, but Ray and I will be heading for the Supercomputer before we go anywhere else and... well, if Turbo's right, if he's about to wake up... is there anything you need me to do there? To say to him?”

Dot closed her eyes momentarily. “There's... not much _to_ do, is there... I'd rather... not...” Dot looked for a brief moment as though she were in pain, troubled by the very thought, but the look cleared and her eyes opened. “Bob... Glitch-Bob... that's over. I need to let him go. I... I'm married now. I _have_ let him go. If he wakes while you're there, tell him... tell him I'm sorry.”

Mouse placed what she hoped was a comforting hand on Dot's shoulder, and then turned it into a farewell hug. “All right, Sug. You've got my IP address if you ever want to talk.”

Dot smiled tentatively, but before she could say any more— “Ma'am, there's some kind of weird energy spike happening near the game cube.”

“Where? I need a visual, Specky.”

Mouse smiled to see Dot in her element, but without the level of danger that a virus brought. That sprite was better than just good at her job., and with everyone in Mainframe to support her, she expected to see Mainframe outdoing the Supercomputer itself in another year.

She looked over and saw Phong, who had apparently been monitoring the interaction. She shot him a smile. “Good bye, Phong,” she said. "I'm gonna miss everyone in Mainframe."

“You will always have a home here, if you should wish to settle down. Good bye, my child,” said Phong.

And that was it. Mouse nodded to herself. She really _was_ going to miss Mainframe. But then again, as she waved to the Surfer waiting for her on the steps of the Principle Office... there were benefits to leaving, too.

* * *

“Bob!” The tiny terror flew up at Bob, making his debonair persona look a little strange. The boy was dressed stylishly, wearing a suit and tie, and he held alcohol in his hand that Bob had to dodge to avoid getting on himself.

“Enzo?!” Bob looked over at the sniping User, but it seemed the glint wasn't targetted towards either of them right now. Bob took a moment to assess the situation. The wheelchair must have been made of pretty sturdy stuff, as it stayed up despite the young sprite bouncing off of his chest and into his lap. “Enzo, you know your sister wouldn't be happy with you being in a game...”

“Welman doesn't seem to have that issue, though,” came the voice of AndrAIa through the crowd of partigoers.The sprite herself showed soon after, her turquoise hair up in a strange bouffant style.

“Aww...” Matrix didn't seem particularly happy to see either of them, but his lover just shrugged.

“Hey, you try to keep him out of games,” she said, laying a kiss on the cowboy in pink. “I've been looking around, and we have a real problem, Sparky. This is game is still in _alpha_. It's supposed to be multiplayer, no game sprites at all, but they need to test out different strategies so... here we are.”

“Oh, great. The kid's in an alpha test?”

Bob gave Matrix a Look. “Come on, what's the worst the could happen, Matrix?” Bob smoothly took the champagne flute from Enzo and placed it on a table, then handed the little sprite a glass of regular energy instead, ignoring the expected whine. "Hey, why don't you play with Frisket for a nano?"

“Alpha games are way more likely to crash, for one thing,” said Matrix. "Not to mention that sometimes the win conditions don't trigger and the game just won't leave."

Bob sighed. “Well, none of that's going to change whether Enzo is here or not. Let's all concentrate on ending the game. AndrAIa, do you know what we're supposed to do?”

"I heard there's a _spy_ in the party," said Enzo excitedly. "The User's supposed to figure out who the spy is, then shoot them. The spy can win by completing their objectives... but who do you think the spy is?"

Bob grinned and winked.

"They say the User only has one bullet," said AndrAIa, "but it's an alpha build, so **\--** " Her sentence was drowned out by the sudden sound of gunfire, and one of the AI sprites went down. The whole party went quiet for a moment, except for Frisket, whose growls echoed throughout the silent garden.

"This is bad. This is very bad," said Bob quietly, which seemed to be a trigger for everyone else at the party going back to their activities.

Matrix nodded, a grim look on his face as he scanned the outside again. "He's either got unlimited bullets, or the lose conditions aren't triggering."

"Either way," said Bob gravely, "we need to get this game over with."

"What should we do, Bob?" Little Enzo got out of Bob's lap and looked out the window, then over at Matrix. "Should we take the fight to him?"

"No way, little Sparky," said AndrAIa. "Alphas are unstable enough. We need to try to do this the right way first. Going after the User is a last resort."

"Agreed," said Bob. "But he might also trigger a win if he shoots the spy. _Me_. So let's win this game and hope it triggers the game ending properly." He looked over at the little sprite. "Enzo, I need _you_ to do something for me while I play out the part of the perfect guest..."

* * *

Brown eyes opened, slowly and painfully. Where in the net was he? This didn't look like... like... where was he supposed to be...? It wasn't there, wherever _there_ was. There was a soft beeping sound beside him. He felt strange. Who was he...? Memories seemed to filter back slowly, as if he'd had some kind of buffer overrun.

A stern sprite, Dixon... a 2-bit virus... Kilobyte... an explosion, two explosions...

"Dot!" He sat up abruptly. This definitely wasn't Mainframe. In fact, it looked a lot more like he was in some sort of quarantine room in the Supercomputer. Yes, the walls that looked infinitely distant, though he was pretty sure they were only microns away, and the bed he lay on certainly pointed to that.

He sat up. He wasn't tied to the bed like he'd heardhappened to some Guardians when they'd been under the influence of a virus, so that was tentatively a good thing. "Hello?"

Glitch clicked a greeting back, and a reassurance that he was okay, but he wasn't entirely sure whether or not his keytool shared the same definitely of okay. Glitch had _also_ thought things were okay after Dixon, after all. It's reassurance was not enough for Bob.

The blue Guardian set to work, removing the energy transfer unit, and soon the beeping stopped, which prompted the entrance of a medical worker. "You're awake! Turbo will be pleased," he said.

"Turbo? I can report to him later. I need to get back to Mainframe," replied Bob. "There's a copy of me that's **\--** "

"I told ya he'd wake up for me," came a familiar voice from the hallway. "Bob!"

"Mouse?" He stood, walking over to the door to greet Mouse even as the medic went to call the Prime Guardian. He looked past her to see Ray Tracer give him a wave, which he returned a little unenthusiastically **\--** really, the man had brought the copy to Mainframe, and that had caused all sorts of trouble **\--** but he didn't see anyone else. "Is there some kind of trouble in Mainframe? Thanks for coming, Mouse, but I've got to get back."

"Bob, I... Bob, maybe you ought to sit down."

* * *

"Ah, the plans. Thank you, Enzo. Now, go blend in. You and Frisket can take a walk around the party. No champagne, though!"

"No problem, Bob!" The little sprite skipped off. Bob looked at Frisket and nodded at Enzo. The dog huffed, hardly inclined to take orders from Bob. "Come on, Frisket, let's go see if we can get some of those candies!" The dog _was_ still Enzo's dog, though, and Frisket stood to follow little Enzo off through the crowd of game sprites.

"I still don't think it was a good idea to have a little sprite do that," said AndrAIa, appearing at Bob's shoulder once Enzo had gone.

Bob smiled and took a sip of his coffee. "If he's going to be a Guardian... _again_... he needs to learn how to play. Dot used to get mad because she thought he should be learning Basic or Cobol, but I used to take him into games all the time." Game sprite milled around them and Bob grabbed a book from a shelf, running his finger down it for a moment before putting it back.

"Alpha builds?" asked AndrAIa skeptically.

"Well, no. But only _you_ could have kept him out," Bob reminded her, then handed her the papers Enzo had found. "Look, it doesn't matter, he's done his part, and it's time for yours. The dead drop's right over there. Do you mind?"

"Are you _sure_ the game's going to take this as fulfilling the conditions?"

"It seems to me that having the spy figure out how to get others to do their job would fit the conditions of the game." Bob shrugged. "Besides, when Matrix put the poison in the old lady's glass, the line in my tablet got a strike through it, so the game must be registering the actions more than who's taking them."

AndrAIa took the papers and scowled. "You _should_ have just had me and Matrix do this. Putting that risk on Enzo—"

"Is definitely not worse than giving him my code before I got blasted into the Web." Bob rolled his eyes, looking at AndrAIa with some annoyance. "Look, I've made a lot of mistakes, AndrAIa, but you and Matrix _aren't_ two of them, and neither is having Enzo help in a game. Not when he's already here."

AndrAIa looked at him for a moment more, then nodded slightly. "Well, you're the Guardian," she said, a touch uncertainly as she grabbed a flute of champagne and began working her way around the room.

Around her, the game AI sprites were chatting about all sorts of things. Spies, snipers, the death of the old game sprite... AndrAIa was glad that the old one would recover, at least. Alphas were like that: unlike regular games, where some changes could become permanent between iterations on different systems, game states always reset in an alpha.

She nodded at Matrix as she continued her circuit. He was keeping his eye on the sniper, and she was glad she could count on her partner. She wasn't sure she liked Bob's strategy. Sending other sprites to do his job might be the best idea for the game, but it seemed to her like he was cynically protecting himself, as many of the sprites she and Matrix had met while game hopping had.

She shook herself. There had to be something wrong with her assumptions. This was _Bob_. Of course he wasn't. This was the best way to win an unstable game, that was all. They just—

"AndrAIa!" Matrix shoved her down and into the dead drop as a bullet passed over her head.

"Game over," game the resounding voice, but the alpha build was unstable enough that it didn't release them until they were quite high off of the ground.

The four sprites fell onto the hard wire of Baudway as the cube lifted itself out of Mainframe, and the orange skinned sprite took a moment to catch her breath before standing up and looking around. "Is everyone okay? Oh, Sparky..." She knelt down next to Matrix. His arm was oozing energy. "That User's gun must have packed a punch."

"Yeah," said Matrix, putting a hand over the wound. The blood seemed to spread around his fingers regardless. "This is why I _hate_ alphas."

"Me, too." The game sprite threw a look over at Bob. "Come on, let's get you to the infirmary. Bob, take Enzo to school, okay?" She pulled out a zip board and soon they were both on it, leaving Bob and Enzo where they stood.

Bob watched them for a moment, then turned to look at Enzo. "You look... unharmed. Let's get you to school."


	3. POSIX

"It's a very strange energy signature," came the warbling voice of Welman Matrix. "Very strange indeed. Maybe it's encrypted." He was wandering around Phong's office, pacing in his own way. Dot wished he'd just sit down.

"An encrypted energy surge?" Dot frowned, then reached out to poke at the little red teapot on Phong's desk. Something about the lighting was off, the top of it really looked darker than the bottom. "That doesn't make much sense. Phong, have we seen anything like that before? In the archives or the read-only room, maybe?"

"No, my child." Phong put his spindly fingers together as he considered how this might be the case, and pulled the teapot to himself, pouring it into two cups. He offered one to Dot, and sipped his own, light glinting off of the ripples in the liquid. "This would seem to be an entirely new phenomenon. If it is encrypted, Mouse would certainly be able to decrypt it. Or perhaps the Guardians would know something about it."

"I don't know, Phong. Mainframers take care of themselves, shouldn't we at least _try_ to figure this out ourselves, rather than rely on them?"

Welman tilted his head, seemingly confused. "But Dot, you married a Guardian."

"No, Dad, I married _Bob_. The last time something unexpected happened in Mainframe, the Guardians tried to destroy us. And the last real contact we had with them was when they were infected by Daemon. Bob's an exception, but... We just can't _trust_ the Guardians."

"Dot, they also took Bob to try to heal him," argued Phong.

Dot winced slightly and leaned back in her chair. "Glitch-Bob was one of their own. We can't expect them to help us the same way. And if it's not in your readme files, I can't imagine it's in theirs. It's your call, Phong, but I just don't think we should trust them until we have a better handle on what's happening, or what their reaction is going to be."

"I think we should ask," replied Welman, looking at his daughter. "We fixed the problems with Daemon. I've seen some broadcasts on the RSS feeds, Mainframers are heroes to the net. I'm sure they're not going to destroy us because we ask about an energy surge."

"We fixed Daemon by unleashing Hex," she answered brusquely, then sighed. She hated arguing with her father. "Maybe you're right, dad. Still, we should ask Bob first. We had no idea they'd try to destroy us when the web creature invaded, but he knew right away."

"I thought Guardians were supposed to mend and defend?"

"Well, yes, dad, that's true, but..."

Phong tapped his cup, clearly deep in thought. "When it is not possible, Bob said that it is protocol to defend the greatest number even at the expense of a smaller system. Mainframe is an isolated system, with little consequence to the rest of the net should it be destroyed." Phong sipped some more of his tea, and Dot took a larger draught of her own, then put the cup down on the table.

She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. "I don't like that it disappeared when the game left, either. Could it have been connected to the game in some way? Bob and Matrix were both headed in, maybe one of them saw something..." She tapped her fingers across the desk as she tried to figure out what it might mean. "Dad, were you able to get any other readings from it?"

"It didn't last long enough," said the null apologetically.

Dot refilled her teacup. "Specky said it left as soon as the game did. Maybe we're missing some context switch. Bob or Matrix could give us more information about what happened in the game, and that might lead us to some sort of conclusion."

"No need to ask Bob or Matrix," came another female sprite's voice as AndrAIa walked in. "That game was rough. Enzo got in—"

"Oh no," said Dot.

"What's wrong with that?" asked Welman. "You sent him into one when Daemon came."

"Dad, that was different," Dot protested. "Games are dangerous. I knew my plan was going to fail, I thought it was the only way to save him— I was hoping it might succeed, but the truth is that I was just buying time—"

"You two can argue over whether or not Enzo should be in games in the first place, but Dot," interupted AndrAIa, "Bob was _not_ taking that game as seriously as he should have. He had little Enzo directly involved, which might have been okay in a usual situation, except that _this_ wasn't a normal game, it was an _Alpha_."

"Ohhhhhh, dear," said Phong. Dot and Welman both looked at AndrAIa and Phong blankly. "Bob and Matrix must be here for this discussion," he said, then quickly called them both to the office.

Matrix arrived first, having already been in the infirmary. His arm was bandaged, but he looked well enough other than that. Dot and Welman were both concerned and fussed over him. "This is the sort of thing that happens in an Alpha," said AndrAIa to Dot while they all waited for Bob. "He should have sidelined little Enzo."

"Is Enzo okay?" she asked.

"Well, yes, but—"

"Hey," said Bob as he entered the office. AndrAIa fell silent, as Phong gave a gesture that showed he wanted to get started with his situation descriptor.

"Have a seat, my children, and I will explain why I have called you all here." He opened his desk and pulled out a scanner. It looked a little bit degraded from age, but Phong pressed a few buttons on it and it came to life, a little display screen saying that no signals were detected. Everyone looked at it curiously for a moment before Phong began to talk again.

"Many years ago, this system was in active development," said Phong in his slow, measured manner. The reactions from the group were varied. Bob's eyebrows raised; clearly the thought hadn't occurred to him that such an out of the way system would be used in development. Matrix and Dot looked confused: why had this not been taught to either of them in school? AndrAIa seemed pensive, having not learned much about Mainframe's history during the brief period she'd been a child there, but also trying to think about what she knew of systems where there was active development.

"What does that mean?" asked Dot.

Welman looked about as disturbed as a null in an exosuit _could_ look. "It means that games are more likely to crash and cause tears or other problems... But active development ended when I was a child," he said, his voice pitching up and down like a sin wave.

"That is what we thought," said Phong. "But this strange signal and an Alpha game can only mean that those dark times have returned."

Matrix crossed his arms. "That doesn't sound ominous at all."

"In those times, we recorded and identified four POSIX signals," continued Phong. His voice sounded tired, but he tapped a button on his desk and the lights in the office dimmed. A projector came online, shooting photons against one of the walls in red, blue and green.

"The Abort signal is the simplest of them," said Phong. "When this signal hit a game, it would terminate."

"I remember hearing about those in one of the other systems I was in," mused Bob. "I've never seen one, but they said it was like a cron hitting the game."

Phong nodded gravely. "It is not so dangerous, as the game cube leaves. The danger is only in that changes the game does to a sector do not get fully undone. We believe that this signal is... _User_ generated." There were several gasps around the room, but Phong was disinclined to take questions about it. The slide changed with a flipping sound. "The Quit signal is the second least dangerous, but it can cause damage to the core. The game ends, but the processor takes energy from the core and sends it out. We don't know where."

"The _Trap_ , on the other hand..." Phong paused.

"They thought that these came from outside the system. They would pause a game. Sometimes it would time out, and when that happened, anyone in the game would..." Welman paused here himself. "Well. They wouldn't always come back." He looked at Dot and Matrix. "We don't really know how it works but... Your mother's parents were lost in one."

Dot let out a soft oh, while Phong nodded in response. "When it did not time out," he added, "there could be other issues. Sometimes, it would restart unexpectedly, with the sprites and binomes inside unprepared to continue with the game. Other times, they said they would lose access to objects they were holding, causing additional difficulties in winning."

Phong pressed a button and the last two signals appeared on the wall.

"Segv, named after one of our most famous scientists," said Welman. "It's the most dangerous of the signals. It can cause a small scale explosion, and large drains of energy from the core into the sector occurred automatically to repair damage. There were theories at the time that it was because of errors— it often seemed to happen when a User interacted with something inside of a game. Or at least, that's what Professor Segv, the only one we know to have see one and lived, said."

Everyone was silent for a moment as the lights went back up.

Dot was the first to speak. "So you think this new signal... might be another of these dangerous events."

"Precisely."

Dot nodded, then looked at Matrix and Bob. "We need more information. I need both of you to start looking for these signals, and getting scans. In the meantime, no one is to go into a game."

"But Dot," said Matrix, "we can't lose sectors to games. We have to go in them, regardless of what might happen."

Dot looked at Matrix's wound, then at Bob, who nodded towards her in both concern and support. She didn't like risking either of them, but... Matrix was right. Letting whole sectors go just because they were afraid wasn't much of a solution either. "All right," she relented. "But only Guardians should be going into the games. That means no more Enzo, no more Frisket, no more AndrAIa, and no more binomes. If anyone other than a Guardian is in the path of a game, we should try to get them out of the way."

"I agree," said Bob quickly, and Phong nodded.

"Dad, I need you to work with Specky to come up with some better parameters for a scan, and get those to Bob and Matrix ASAP." Welman nodded.

"I will assist them," said Phong. "There may be additional information in the read-only room about these signals."

"Thanks, Phong. AndrAIa, you're going to help me come up with a communication strategy so that we don't panic anyone, butstill make sure that no one starts going into games they shouldn't." Dot smiled grimly. Crisis mode. She would make sure that the system was safe, no matter what. "Right. Let's get to it!"

As everyone filtered out of the room, AndrAIa stayed behind. "Can I talk to you for a nano, Dot?"

Dot grabbed her organizer, already thinking of ways to deal with the population. Maybe Mike could do a series of videos? Although, they'd have to be scripted to make sure the television didn't spend all of his time stroking his ego. "Sure, what's up?"

"It's about Bob, and what I said before." Dot made an inquisitive sound that wasn't quite a word and glanced at AndrAIa. The sprite seemed far more hesitant than usual. "With little Enzo. Has Bob seemed a little... strange?"

"Strange? What do you mean?"

"Well... he knew that game was an Alpha build, but he had Enzo doing tasks that should have been his. And he had Matrix and I doing the dangerous parts of the game while he... just sort of... kept his head down. I know it's been a long time since I played a game with Bob, but... is that really his style?"

Dot paused and put her organizer down carefully. It was a serious accusation being made about her new husband. "You think he... what, put everyone else in danger for no reason?"Dot wasn't inclined to believe it, but she needed to hear it out. Luckily, AndrAIa was already shaking her head.

"No, no! That's not what I mean." The game sprite frowned. "His reasoning made sense. If the User had shot him, we might have lost the game. It's just... well, Enzo's a little sprite."

Dot looked into AndrAIa's eyes for a moment, then smiled at her. "Bob has been with Mainframe for a really long time. He'd been here for almost two years when the webcreature attacked. I know you didn't get the chance to really know him when you were young, but he's a part of Mainframe. And I trust my husband implicitly. Look at all the work he did to get rid of Daemon."

AndrAIa frowned. "That was the _other_ Bob."

"They're the same person. Sort of." It was Dot's turn to pause for a nano, pressing a hand to her head before she shook it, as though she were clearing some bad logic away. "The point is, Bob was always like that. He thinks best when the pressure's on, and he adapts. He's a smart sprite, and if he asked you and Matrix to do something, even if it was dangerous, I'm sure it was necessary."

"It was an _Alpha_ , Dot. And Enzo could have gotten hurt."

"But he didn't." Dot looked at AndrAIa, thinking hard about the statement. Bob had always had a bit of a problem understanding the limitations of a little sprite. Of course, she herself had often had the opposite issue, thinking _only_ of his limitations. And then there was AndrAIa's own bias, having seen Enzo lose an eye when he was just a little older than the little sprite she knew now must have been traumatic. "I'll talk to him about it," she relented finally. "Now, let's figure out how to get the message out and keep everyone safe."

* * *

A second is a very long time in Mainframe. Not so long as a second spent in games, but a lot longer than a second has any right to be. It's the same amount of time as a second in the Supercomputer, though due to processing speeds, it's _also_ shorter.

One second in the Supercomputer is enough for Bob and Glitch to havehad their energy restored, and for Mouse to have a long heart to heart with Bob that really hasn't gone much of anywhere and for Turbo to have commiserated with him over an IO shot before getting back to his duties.

He throws a ball against a brick wall and watches it crumble and thinks of it as a metaphor for his life.

One second is enough time for him to play three different games against the User, and to begin to mourn the loss of his love.

Only to begin, of course. He thinks it will take a lifetime to accept it, and that's why he can't return to Mainframe. He'd been in the system for two years, and lost in the web while longing to return for another, and if a second is a long time, a year is almost unimaginable. The system, Mainframe, Dot... and of _course_ it's more than just Dot. It's Phong and Enzo and Old Man Pearson. It's Mike and Cecil. It is his apartment in Kit's— though that is probably a shared sort of ownership now, he thinks ruefully. It's Al's down in Sector 31, and it's Lost Angles, and it's all the memories that Bob has of staring down Megabyte and Hexadecimal and even of solving the problem with Daemon. It's spending time playing Phong's favorite game just so he can get a little bit of advice that ends with the reminder that "this is _not_ the Supercomputer!"

But....

 _But_.

He feels selfish, and he just can't figure out how to go back while he hurts this much. When he goes back, he won't be able to talk to Dot the same way. Will he just be her friend? _Can_ he just be her friend? He's spent so long in love with her, and all his emotions are tangled up in it, and it's not as though she's rejected _him_ , which would certainly have hurt but not in the same way. No, she didn't reject him at all. She's married to him. He's just... not the only him. And when he goes back, he's going to have to live with watching her happily going about her life with a version of himself. And from what Mouse said, he knows that she doesn't even want to think of _him_ as him.

Which is ridiculous. Of course he's _him_ , even if the other guy is _also_ him.

Everything about it is hard to get his head around. He didn't manage it in Mainframe before he tried to split himself from Glitch, and he's not managing it now that he's back to his own thoughts. He's a Guardian, for User's sake. And so is the other Bob who has both stolen and not-stolen his life. If _Bob_ can't reconcile something like this, how can he expect anyone else to do it? Dot's always preferred the certainty of an executable set of instructions to the kind of lambda expressions Bob enjoys.

He misses Enzo. Both of them. They are probably the closest to understanding what he's feeling right now. But they are in Mainframe, standing by their sister, and he doesn't want to ask them to choose between him and _him_. If the doctors are right, and he's the copy... maybe they wouldn't even choose him. Maybe they _shouldn't_.

It all just feeds back in on itself, a negative recursive loop without condition or break. He doesn't know what to do with it all. He can't see a resolution, and all he sees are the lonely minutes and hours and years ahead.

Maybe he shouldn't have tried to split himself and Glitch. Maybe he should have tried to _merge_ with the other Bob.

He throws a ball against an edge, watching it as it tips around the top of the wall and bounces around, breaking brick after break before it comes back to him.

A second is such a long time.

Elsewhere in the net, another blue sprite is putting a blanket onto a green sprite's shoulders. She has fallen asleep, still logged in to the system while she was looking at files, figures, and miscellaneous data that has been collected. She has always worked very hard. He reaches past her and taps in a few commands, then a few more and runs a finger down her cheek.

There's no one around to hear him but her. He can't help his smile. "Splendid work, Ms Matrix," he whispers into her ear as the next second arrives.


	4. Parent and Child

"But I don't want to go to school. It's boring and lonely. _Matrix_ didn't need to go to school, and he turned out fine. Just because I don't want to be a renegade doesn't mean I should have to learn binary." Enzo sulked next to his father. "Couldn't we go play jetball? Bob used to let me skip school and play jetball with me all the time!"

"I'm not sure he did that, but even if he did, Bob's not your father," came the exhausted reply. "And you _know_ I like playing ball with you, but jetball's just too fast for the exoskeleton, son. And school is important. Don't you think Bob was glad he knew binary when he met the web riders?"

"It's still boring," said Enzo, swinging his legs under the table. "Bob and Matrix are scanning the system. Can't I go help them, instead?"

Welman sighed as Cecil brought an energy shake for his son, then waved as Dot walked into the diner. "Dot, can you help me out over here? We're having an argument about school."

The green sprite looked at her father, then at Enzo. "Oh, I've had _this_ conversation before. Enzo. You are _going_. End program."

"But I don't want—"

"Warning: incoming game."

Dot looked out the window and up. The User just wasn't favoring her. She'd just wanted to get some energy before she fell over, and of _course_ a game decided Baudway was just the spot to come down. "Okay, everybody out!" Enzo grabbed his energy drink, then ducked down under the table. " _Enzo_. That means _you_."

"Enzo... son..."

Dot crouched down and glared at the boy. "I'll get him out, dad. You get out of here, who knows what would happen if a null got into a game."

The null in the suit looked at Dot, then outside at the descending game, then back at Dot. "All right," he said, but it was reluctant. "I'll be right outside the cube's path."

Enzo peeked out from under the table as Welman left the building, then grabbed onto it again. "I'm _not_ leaving," he said.

"Enzo, these Alpha games are dangerous. Didn't you watch Mike's after school special?"

The warning continued to chime around them. "Huh, _dangerous_." It was getting closer. Dot reached out to grab her little brother, but he evaded her and she got a handful of table cloth instead. "That's what you always say," he replied.

"Enzo!" She reached out again, grabbing his arm and pulling him out from under the table. "Enzo Matrix, you are in so much trouble right now!" She started marching him out of the diner, but as she hit the edge, felt a wave of dizziness come over her and dropped the boy's arm, leaning against the doorway instead as the boy started running further into the path of the incoming game. "What in the net...?"

"Dot?" The little sprite stopped and looked at her as he realized she wasn't chasing him. "Are you okay?" The third warning was upon them. The cube closed over the pair, and Dot shook her head to clear it.

"Dot? Enzo?" Matrix sounded more frustrated than anything. "I thought everyone was supposed to stay clear of the games."

Enzo walked over. "I think Dot's sick," he said worriedly. Matrix looked at her. She did look a little bit pale... "Where's Bob? Maybe he'll know what's wrong."

"Bob's not a diagnostic program, Enzo," said Dot. "Anyways, I'm fine. I just... thought I saw something as the game was coming down. It might have been that signal."

"Well, Bob's outside trying to get more readings, so if it's there, he'll figure it out. In the meantime, I'm going to Reboot and finish the game. You two stay here. And _don't_." He stopped to grab little Enzo's hand. " _Reboot_." His eyes bored into his younger self for a few nanos, then he let go of Enzo. "Take care of Dot, okay, little me? Don't let her turn into a target for the User."

Enzo looked crestfallen, but having been given a task, stopped trying to move his hand to his icon. "Yeah, okay," he said.

Unfortunately, Matrix's little plan was to be foiled by his sister's stubborn streak. "Hey," she looked at her brother with annoyance. "Do I look like someone who can't take care of herself? I do _not_ need anyone's protection," said Dot. "Especially not my little brother's. Reboot!"

"Dot! But that wasn't what I—"

"Well, if she's playing, so am I! Reboot!"

"Oh fer... Reboot!"

* * *

AndrAIa landed near Welman Matrix, who was staring at the outside of the game. The purple reflected against the glass of the skeleton, giving the null inside a strange hue. The game sprite frowned and looked up at Bob, circling the area with the scanner Phong had given him.

"I wish Bob went in and Matrix stayed outside," she said. "He knows he was wounded. But I guess you can't hold Sparky back when he's decided to play a game."

"Nor Enzo," said the doctor. "I hope that he and Dot will be okay."

Bob landed beside them. "Dot's in there?" He tried pointing the scanner at the cube, then knocked the thing. "I thought we agreed, no civilians in the games until we know how these signals work. She makes the rules, then breaks them..."

AndrAIa shook her head, then smiled ruefully. "Wish I were in there with them. But that's the Matrix family for you, renegades all." She paused. "No offense, Doc."

"None taken," said Welman. "They must get it from their mother... have you found any evidence of the signal, Bob?"

"No," he said with a long sighing sound. "This process would be so much easier to track with a keytool. Maybe what we found last second was... well..." He paused and looked at his arm. "A glitch. Maybe it had nothing to do with the Alpha game. Maybe this game is normal."

“Do you really think that, Bob?” AndrAIa didn't, and when Bob's face fell, she knew he didn't either. He hit his scanner again, as though it would force it to pick something up. “I'm sure they'll be okay,” she said consolingly. “All three of them are Matrixes, and Matrixes are survivors.”

Welman nodded inside of his exosuit, raising one metal hand to touch the edge of the game. “My children are strong, even if two of them became adults without me.”

AndrAIa nodded. “Well, there's no point in waiting for the game to end down here. I'm going to go check the monitors in the control rooms. If it's an Alpha build like last time, we need to keep watching it for stability. Later, Bob. Mr Matrix.” With a wave, she was off.

Bob looked at the game for a moment, then nodded. “I should go too. I'll keep scanning, even if I haven't seen anything yet. It'll keep my mind off of them being in there. Dot shouldn't be in an Alpha game... She's too important to the system.”

He unfolded his zip board and stepped on, but before he could fly away, Welman's strange voice came through the speaker. “Bob... is Dot alright?”

As though he'd half expected the question, Bob stopped and fluidly got off of the zip board. “Did you see something that makes you worried?”

“She went chasing after Enzo, but it seemed like she lost energy all of a sudden. That's why they didn't get out.”

“She's always overworked herself,” he said. “She even ended up falling asleep in the PO last night. I'm sure that's all it is.”

The null nodded, but somehow gave off the air of being unconvinced. “Maybe we should have her scanned when the game is done. Make sure none of these anomalies are affecting her. She _is_ the Command Dot Com, after all, and it's not unheard of for some system effects to bounce hardest against the person who's closest to the system.”

“Hm, good luck convincing _her_ of that,” said Bob. His eyes went to the purple cube, reflected light turning them almost red for a moment. “It's a good idea, if we can get her to take enough downtime for it. If she's unwell... I wish I were in there with her.”

The pair stared at the cube for a while more.

“Listen, I, uh... this is a weird question, but... we've never talked about what I should call you, and I was kind of wondering... would it be okay if I called you... father? I know, you're Dot's dad, but you might have noticed that I didn't have any family show up the wedding, and the truth is that I've never really had much in the way of family, just the Guardian Collective, and—“

“Bob,” came the semi-strangled response. The hand of the exoskeleton came down on Bob's shoulder. “I would be honored,” he said.

Bob gave him a tentative smile, while one hand rested on the wall of the game. “Thank you, father.” It was a little bit alien sounding from Bob's throat. Gloating, almost, but Bob wasn't that sort of sprite. "Hey, I think I see something," he said, pulling the scanner up and pressing it against the cube.

"Oh?" Welman took a step closer and looked at the scanner himself. "Ill instruction? I wonder what that means."

"It's a POSIX signal," Bob replied. "It weakens the edges of a game cube. Do you know, there's nothing in my memory about what happens when someone enters the game after it starts."

Welman turned in alarm and put a hand on Bob's chest. "Matrix will protect Dot, Bob. Don't do something foolish— you don't need to risk yourself going in there."

"Oh, don't worry, I wouldn't do that." Bob clapped the exoskeleton-clad null in just the right spot so that the face mask opened up; Welman fell out of the glass enclosure and hit against the wall of the cube... Bob watched as it fell through it and into the game itself.

A corner of his mouth quirked up. “This is bad. This is _very_ bad.”

* * *

Mountains rose over mountains, and dark grey skies seemed to cover the entire gameworld as the three sprites tried to orient themselves. Dot reached up and patted her head. She seemed to be wearing bandages of some sort. She also felt like she was in two places at once; every time she closed her eyes, it was like she was seeing an overlay of lines and numbers. "What kind of weird game is this?"

Enzo had turned into a strange doll. He was a bit smaller than usual— small enough that Matrix could have carried him in one hand— with bits of hair sticking out of his head. "I don't know, sis, but... there's _things_ everywhere. It's like they're growing out of the air."

Matrix removed the golden mask that covered his face. "Things?" Matrix turned and looked at them both. He wore a poncho, but otherwise he looked like the same old Matrix. "It just looks like a big landscape to me." He looked at the pair of them sternly. "I can't believe you two rebooted. Dot, weren't we trying to keep Enzo out of the game?"

"We're _in_ the game now," she replied. "And if you don't see what he's seeing, it's probably a good thing we are."

He shook his head, knowing that the argument was pointless. They had to get on with the game. "I've never seen this game. I'm not as good at this as AndrAIa, but I should be able to get some stats..." He tapped his icon into game sprite mode, and paused as the data came to him. It felt like a picture, in a way, though not an easy one to describe.

"The User is trying to establish connections. Network points, I think. Dot is... a character called President Beach. She can go into a network view and back out. Enzo, you're supposed to be some kind of gadget that can detect... I think it's network errors in real life? It's kind of hard to understand what's going on, there seems to be a whole lot of inaccessible backstory, but the important point is that they'll sap our health if we touch them. My character is trying to destroy the whole game universe— guess I'm the bad guy. I can make it rain, and call for more network errors."

"So how do we win?" asked Dot. "Destroy the gameworld?"

Matrix frowned and tapped his icon back to standard mode. "The User has infinite lives... but this _is_ an Alpha game, so if we do too much, we're going to regret it."

Dot nodded. "All right. So we stick together and cause network errors. Easy plan."

Matrix nodded. "Dot, I need you to go into the network and find where the most vulnerable points are. We'll make our way over to those locations, with Enzo detecting the network errors so that we can avoid them. Then, I'll call for additional errors in the area."

Dot nodded and closed her eyes. The strange feeling of being in two places at once subsided as she began to explore different pathways, moving without moving in her mind.

"Hey, what's that?" Enzo pointed at some mountains where some fractal patterns were glowing in the sky. "They're pretty... so many different colors..."

"I don't know what it is," said Dot, opening her eyes once more, "but I'm pretty sure that's where we need to go." She started walking towards it. "Yes, that's definitely where I was."

Matrix nodded. "That's a long walk." He turned and scanned the horizon. "Dot, stay here. Enzo—" Matrix picked the kid up and put him on his shoulder. "Whoa. I see them now. They go in and out."

"I see them all the time," said Enzo. "Aren't they cool?"

"They're weird. Look, Dot, there's a gamesprite camp nearby. I'm going to get a truck and then I'll be back for you."

"Matrix, I'm not a little sprite. If Enzo is going, so am I."

"But Dot—" He sighed. They were wasting time, and it would be better to get both of them _out_ of the game before something else happened. "Fine, follow me, and be careful about the... _things_."

Enzo held on to Matrix's back while he and Dot started jogging across the plain. They reached a road quickly enough. Enzo's ability was definitely coming in handy, as Matrix was sure he'd have hit several of the strange things while they moved across the level map.

The gamesprite camp was in the middle of some forested area, so Matrix memorized where the errors were and put the boy down behind one of the trees. "You two stay here," he said.

Dot gave him a look, and he gave her one back. "Hey, I'm the one with the Guardian code," he said, and she relented.

There was a feeling he had that he was supposed to do this stealthily, given the way the level was set up, but Matrix wasn't in the mood to wait. This game was dangerous enough, and he needed to protect his family. Besides... there was something better than a truck right over there.

He walked over without a pause and put his mask on, then pulled out Gun, which, quite handily, was still in the form of a gun in this world. "I need that bike." The game sprite looked at him, then at the golden mask, and bolted. Matrix smiled to himself. That was useful.

Her revved the engine, glad that AndrAIa had turned him onto bikes, then brough it around. Enzo could ride on his back, Dot could ride behind him. When he got back to them, though, the pair were just holding hands, staring into the trees.

He stopped his bike next to them. "What's going on?"

"Those network errors... this one isn't a network error. It's _dad_!"

* * *

"I'm seeing signals all over the place now," said Bob, looking worriedly at AndrAIa and Phong through the vid window. "But I'm not sure what they mean."

Phong looked down at the data that was coming through. "It looks very similar to the SegV signal," he said after a few nanos typing. "But I do not understand. The other signals we read did not look like this."

"Could it have something to do with the integrity of the game cube walls?" asked AndrAIa. "I've never heard of anything getting through those once the game is in session."

"The outer shell of the game seems normal enough. My hand won't get through the game cube," he said, demonstrating by pushing against the strangely white-veined purple cube. "It seemed like it was only the null part of him that went inside. Nulls have always had some strange properties. They don't normally go into games." Bob frowned, then looked at the scanner, then back at the vid window. "When that game came down over Hexadecimal, the nulls all scattered, pressed out into the rest of Mainframe... how does it work if they can get inside?"

The three went silent for a while, each of them trying to come up with some reason for the game to be behaving strangely.

"We should contact the Guardians," said AndrAIa, finally. "I'm sure someone there will know something. And didn't Turbo say their keytools had come back?"

Bob reached up and touched his icon, then looked at the ring on his finger and shook his head. "Dot said she didn't want them here. I'm not going to argue argue against her."

"But Bob, we don't know what's going on," she protested. "Do you think they won't?"

"Guardians don't know everything about games," he replied. "I don't know. Phong, what do you think?"

"Oh. I... hm." He stroked his beard. "Well, it's true that Guardians are not all-knowing... Do you believe her concerns are valid, Bob?"

"I—" The scanner started beeping suddenly. "I think something's happening," said Bob with a frown. "Power levels are increasing."

"Sirs, Ma'am... the core is showing increased energy spikes as well."

"Thanks Specky." AndrAIa looked at the readings again. "If not the Guardians, can we at least call Mouse?"

The blue sprite watched Phong shrug across the vid window screen, then nodded. "Well, Dot didn't say anything about not calling Mouse," agreed Bob.

* * *

"How can he be here...? I thought only Enzo could see the network errors... and how is our dad a network error?"

"I don't know," said Matrix with a worried voice. "You were trying to get information from games before to fix nulls, maybe... maybe this is where all the null code goes."

Dot walked closer. She wanted to hold her father's code. She wasn't sure what was going on, but it was gesturing furiously at them, not that any of them could understand whatever it was trying to convey. "Maybe we could retrieve it... bring it back to Mainframe..."

"Dot," Matrix grabbed her hand. "Dot it's not safe. Mainframe nulls can sap our energy, and so can these things. In an Alpha game, we have to treat all potential damage as permanent."

"But Matrix... what if we could bring Dad all the way back?"

Matrix shook his head and grabbed Enzo's hand. The image wasn't anywhere near as clear for him as it clearly was for his siblings. Yes, it was there, the strange shadow in front of him. It resembled their father. But for it to actually _be_ him? No. "It's not possible. Dad's outside the game."

Dot reached out again. "He's _here_ , Matrix," she said.

"No." He pulled them both back, away from the shade in front of them.A high pitched whine filled the air. "Do you hear that? It's the User. We can't kill it directly, so we need to avoid contact and head towards that fractal."

"But... Matrix..."

"Enzo, I'm the Guardian here. Dot always made us listen to Bob because he was the Guardian. Remember?" The boy nodded. "Well now, you've got to listen to me. That's not dad. It's... wishful thinking." Matrix put the kid on his back and got on the bike. "Dot? Let's go."

She was reluctant herself, looking torn between trying to communicate and following his instructions. "Guardian, Dot. Yellow icon?" She nodded wistfully and got onto the back of the bike.

He started driving, and not a nano too soon, as he heard the sound of another engine. The User had arrived on the scene, probably intending to take down the camp.

"What's the User doing?" asked Enzo.

Matrix slowed the bike and looked over his shoulder. Yes, there was the User, and there was the weird afterimage of his father. The User seemed to be holding a knife.

"We don't want to see this, do we, Dot?"

She shook her head, "No. We should keep—"

The User struck, its knife going into their father's image. And suddenly,it was as if the whole game screamed, blasting sound and light around the small family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Referenced game: Death Stranding. Originally, I was going to do President Beach and Mario/Luigi. Alas, the story conspired to have me write this.


	5. Null Pointer Exception

"Warning: Segmentation fault. Unhandled null pointer exception detected."

It was the only warning anyone outside the game received, and no one knew what it meant. Well, there was one binome, but Mr Pearson wasn't in the area to warn anyone about what was about to happen, and even if he had been, there was nothing anyone could have done in the time they had. The game suddenly contracted, then expanded, covering the entire system for a nanosecond before imploding again.

A stream of data exploded out from the core as the game disappeared from existence. Dot, Enzo and Matrix fell from some height down to the roof of the Diner. Tears came from out of nowhere, littering the system like glowing lights. The sky flickered entirely _off_ for a moment, leaving tears as the only light in an eerie city. Mainframe held its collective breath, until the sky seemed to remember its function and lit up in its customary blue color.

Bob zipped over to the group, pulling first Dot, then Enzo to their feet. Matrix shook his head slowly to clear it, while Bob looked over Dot and Enzo himself to ensure they weren't injured. "Matrix! What happened?"

Unexpectedly, little Enzo was the first to respond. "Bob! We saw dad's code in there. It was like he was really there!"

"You... saw him?" asked Bob quietly. "Are you sure it was him?"

Matrix was the one to reply next. "It looked like his code, somehow. The User tried to interact with him, and that's when the shift hit the fan."

"Listen, I..." Bob put a hand on Dot's shoulder. "I need to tell you... it probably _was_ him. Somehow the game let him in, even after the cube had dropped."

A tear hung ominously above them, and Bob began to pull Dot away from it. "What do you mean? No." He looked at her, unsure how to explain it, but her next words showed that she knew exactly what had happened. "No, it couldn't have been," said Dot in a panciked voice. "Maybe... maybe he got out. Bob, he could have gotten out, right? We got out! We just need to look—"

"You mean... dad is..." Enzo looked at Bob, then Matrix.

"I'm sorry," said Bob. Dot took Bob's hand and looked in his eyes, almost begging him to take it back, then put her arms around his neck and started to cry. Both Enzos looked lost. "I'm so sorry..." Bob closed his eyes and let her sob into his chest, letting the situation sink in, letting her process it with him there for a moment. "We need to get you to the Principle Office, and then I need to take care of these tears. Matrix, do you think you can help? Or do you... need some time?"

Matrix looked at Bob then, his face pale and his eye wet with unshed tears, but he seemed to try to pull himself together. "Mend and defend," replied Matrix, though he sounded almost unformatted with grief. "How do we do it without a keytool?"

"It was probably rare, but Mainframe had to deal with tears before we Guardians showed up with keytools. Phong will have something we can use. It'll be manual, but it'll work. Come on." He pulled Dot onto his zip board with him and flew them to the Principle Office, the two Enzos following close behind.

By the time they'd arrived, Dot had managed to compose herself. She was a leader, and the system was in a crisis. She didn't have time to keep crying, or to mourn or even continue to process the deletion of a single null, not when there was so much that needed to get done.

She strode into the command chamber with Bob and Matrix trailing after her. "We need to fix the tears. Phong, do you have something they can use?"

"Yes, I... yes, my child. But I must remind even you that this is not the Supercomputer. These tools were not meant to be used to clean up so many tears."

Dot nodded. "Bob. Matrix. I need you both out there." She paused. "AndrAIa, do you think you can help with that?"

"Whatever's needed," she said.

Bob frowned as he looked at the tools that Phong had given him. "These are beyond primitive... Dot? Can I talk to you for a nano?"

"Not now, Bob. Specky, what have you found from your analysis of the signals?"

Specky grabbed the information they'd compiled and brought it over, but Bob wasn't ready to be so easily dismissed. "Dot," he tried again as she brushed past him. "Dot, we need to call the other Guardians. With help, we can fix the tears a lot faster."

"This is Mainframe, Bob. We take care of ourselves."

"Dot." His face looked quite annoyed, but his voice remained calm. "Be reasonable. We need their help."

"I'm the Command Dot Com, Bob, and in this kind of crisis, I'm the one in charge. We'll call them when _I_ say we'll call them, and not before." She shook her head. "Now, I want binomes out there covering every micron where that game touched. If my father is alive, if the Welman null is still out there, I want to know, and if he's really... deleted..." Her voice broke for a moment, but she took a deep breath and continued on, undaunted, "then that's important information for our records, too."

"Phong, do you—"

"Warning. Incoming game."

"What? _No_ , I..." She took a deep breath. "Matrix, AndrAIa, see what you can do about the tears. Bob, I need you in that game. Go!"

He looked at her for a moment more, then pulled her in for a hug. "I'm sorry about your father. Lead the system. You can do this, and I'll see you once the game is won," he said, then let go and headed out.

She leaned on the console for a moment. She felt exhausted, and the pace of the system wasn't letting up at all. She just wanted to rest, but there wasn't any time... and she could see her little brother trying to sneak out. "Enzo, don't you dare try to get into that game."

"But what if Dad's in there? Dot, maybe we can still save him!"

She squeezed her eyes shut and tapped her foot. "No, Enzo. Please."

"Warning. Incoming game."

She just wanted it all to stop, to have a moment's rest, to be able to process everything. The hustle and bustle around the command deck was driving her to distraction. She felt jittery, as though she was filled with Java but had no energy to back it up.

Matrix put a hand on her shoulder and she felt calmer. "It's gonna be okay, sis," he said softly.

"Warning: Incom—"

Without fanfare, the warning and chiming stopped. "What the...?" She looked up and the consoles in front of her darkened strangely. It seemed the game had been terminated somehow. "Phong, what just happened?"

The elderly sprite tapped on the console. "I do not know," he said in concern.

"Dot?" A vid window popped up in the center of the room, and Bob looked out of it in confusion. The skies of Mainframe behind him were a sick-looking red, with what appeared to be power surges flickering through them. The effect was frightening, and seemed to emphasize the tears hanging around the city. "The game just disappeared. And..."

Dot stared. It looked almost as if they were on the inside of a firewall, although, she could see they still had a connection to the overall net. "What in the net is going on?"

* * *

"We can't just call the Guardians," said Bob with some frustration in his voice. Al's was dimly lit, but it was also the easiest way for him to get service. Even _with_ being married to Dot, it seemed as though Cecil just wasn't interested in getting him anything from the menu.

"We know she's wrong," said AndrAIa. "The Guardians are the best solution."

"Yeah, but... I can argue with her, but she's the one who calls the shots right now. And without Glitch or the main control room, or Phong's support, we can't just call the Collective for information." He leaned back.

Matrix took a bite of his slow food. "What if we sent them a report?" asked Matrix. "She couldn't be upset at us for that. You were always supposed to report back to them, right?"

"Well, yes, but..." He sighed. "AndrAIa, did you get anywhere with Mouse?"

"She said she'd keep looking through the remote logs, but she hadn't found anything useful in them yet," she replied, crossing her arms. "Not only that, but Mouse said that systems with active development were usually closed leaf nodes, so she didn't really know much about the situation without additional research. So she can probably help us in analyzing any readings we get, but she's not going to be able to give us any more than that."

"We don't _need_ Mouse," said Matrix. "We need someone who knows games and active systems. That's the Guardians. Isn't it?"

Bob put his shake down. "It's just not that simple."

"Sure it is." Matrix looked at Bob. "Either you think they can help us, or you don't. Which is it, Bob?"

The blue sprite shrugged with his hands. "They can help."

"Then we need to get in contact with them. What is she so worried about? You're a Guardian, I'm... well, I've got Guardian code."

AndrAIa sighed. "Well, lover... when I talked to Mouse, she kind of implied that Dot's just really anxious about, well, the other Bob... confronting her about marrying _this_ Bob." She looked at Bob for a moment, as his brow crinkled slightly. "You know she loves you, and she doesn't have any second thoughts about that... but she never wanted to hurt the other Bob, either."

"That's still no reason—"

"Imagine if that copy of you had happened when we were both young," she said. "If, when we got out of one of the games, there had been _two_ Enzos instead of one. It would have been hard for all of us."

Matrix frowned. "Yeah, all right, but she's in charge of the system. She has to put her feelings aside and do what's right for everyone, even if it is uncomfortable."

AndrAIa nodded and put a comforting hand on Matrix's shoulder. "I know, Sparky."

Bob tapped his fingers on the table for a few nanos. "I could try to distract her," he said, almost reluctantly. "If I did that... if you're in the control room while I keep her busy, AndrAIa could patch a connection through to Turbo that Matrix could take in Phong's office, and update him on what's going on." He sighed. "I... I don't like this idea, though. I'm her husband. It feels like I'm... like I'm choosing sides _against_ her. Can't you just convince Phong about this?"

"Phong's letting her call the shots while this crisis plays out. And you're choosing the system," said Matrix. "You know that's what she'd want you to choose."

"She'd _want_ me to convince her. It feels... wrong." Bob tapped his fingers again, staring at them for a nano. "But then, it's wrong for her to shut the other Bob out out of the system, too, if that's what she's doing..." He looked at the other two sprites. "Are you two sure we should go around her?"

AndrAIa and Matrix looked at each other for a nano, then nodded back at Bob.

"All right. Let's see what we can do."

* * *

"Hey Dot," Bob's voice rang across the control room as he sauntered in. "We're going to have to stop repairing tears for the day. It takes a lot of mental energy to keep it up, and the tools are starting to overheat. We're only about 10% done."

Dot rubbed her head as Bob and AndrAIa came in. "That's it?" She paused as the pair of them looked at her in disbelief. "Oh, I'm sorry, I know it's difficult with the equipment we have. I was just hoping we'd be able to get more done."

Bob nodded and walked around to where Dot was. "We could use some help, you know," he said, but Dot just shook her head slightly. He put his hands on her shoulders and started massaging them. "You didn't come home last night," he murmured into her ear. "And you look tired today. Maybe we could go grab a bite to eat? Some downtime might help you figure out what's going on."

"There's too much to get done," she protested.

" _Everyone_ 's tired." Bob looked around. "Specky's barely got his eye open. Let's just take a few nanos to breathe, and everyone can come back and look at the data fresh."

Dot shook her head again. "I don't think I can think of anything else," she replied.

"Okay, then... how about you go over what you know with me. Maybe I'll see something you don't."

She pursed her lips, then looked over at him. "Well... you _do_ always have a different perspective." Bob nodded encouragingly.

"Let's go to your office and talk about it."

"All right," she said, and the pair of them headed out, Bob throwing a look to AndrAIa as they walked out the door.

The game sprite waited until they were out before she started inputting commands. Bob had been right: once Dot was out of the room, half of the binomes seemed to be trying to take a quick nap, which meant that no one said a word to AndrAIa about what she was doing... though Phong did look over her shoulder with a bit of interest.

Nanos later, Matrix would have an online vid window with Turbo.

* * *

"I think you're scared," said Turbo. There was a note of challenge in his voice, a sense that he wanted to be proved wrong.

The sprite beside him gave Turbo an incredulous look. "Scared? I'm not scared. What is there to be scared of?" He threw the ball against the bricks, causing some major damage before it came back to Turbo.

"You tell me." Turbo looked at Bob challengingly. "Mainframe is _your_ base of operations. It was _your_ experiment, which needs _your_ final data and _your_ final report. I think you're scared to go back because we've told you you're a copy." He threw the ball himself, knocking out another three bricks. "Bob, if you need a few more seconds to collect yourself, that's one thing, but conditionals aren't going to change just because you've isolated yourself from everyone else on the intranet." Bob shook his head and threw the ball, missing the bricks. Turbo grabbed the ball on the rebound and smacked it back, watching it pass right by the blue sprite and into the illegal zone. He sighed. "All right, Bob. If you're not afraid of going back, then tell me what the problem is."

Bob shook his head as he went to grab the ball again, bouncing it a few times. "I don't know, Turbo. If I go back there, who's to say I'm needed at all? They've got... _Bob_. He can gather the data, do the reports. He probably would have by now if he hadn't... _married Dot_."

He threw the ball and broke through seven layers of bricks before it bounced back to Turbo. It was going fast enough that Turbo let it go by him.

"I still can't believe she chose him. I'm the one who saved Mainframe. I'm the one she worked with against Daemon! Even if I were the copy, which I _don't_ believe, I'm still the better choice."

The older sprite closed his eyes as he tried to think up a response. Bob was three years out of the Academy, but sometimes it seemed as though he was still a new Guardian, still with the same optimizations and pagefaults he'd had as a youngster. He'd just as often come up with some new idea he'd had while merged with Glitch, of course, which reminded Turbo that the blue sprite had been through an awful lot, even for a Guardian.

Instead of coming up with a solution to the problem, though, Copland beeped. "Ah, put it up." The keytool clicked an acknowledgement, then put a vid window up. "Matrix? Wasn't expecting to hear from you."

"Turbo, um." Matrix paused. He wasn't exactly a Guardian, so he wasn't entirely sure how to have this conversation. Maybe he should have been the one to distract Dot... but then he saw Bob waving behind the Prime Guardian, and that gave him a bit of confidence. "Bob! You're awake!"

"Hey, Matrix. Sorry I haven't called." Bob smiled a little ruefully. Seeing Matrix made his worries about the other Bob disappear for a nano.

"Not a problem. Bob and I have been taking care of the games. We do have _a_ problem, though. Well, really, more than one. See, Dot's been kind of cagey about letting us send you guys updates, but according to Phong, the system's going through an active development phase. We've had two Alpha builds come through—"

"Whoa. That's not normal for Mainframe," said Bob. "How've you been handling them?"

"Not that well," replied Matrix. "And the last game..." He looked down.

"What is it, son?"

"A null got in the game," replied Matrix, then looked at Bob. "Our dad." He looked away and took a breath, as if he was about to explain.

"And there was a segmentation fault," said Bob. "I'm really sorry. I'm... not sure there's ever been a _distinguishable_ null in a game. Did you... find him, afterwards?" His curiousity was visible, and Turbo smiled a little bit at him. If that sprite hadn't become a Guardian, he'd have been some sort of mad scientist, with all those radical ideas of his. "Maybe I shouldn't ask that, it's probably insensitive... How's the system?"

Matrix looked curious, too. "How'd you know that would cause a problem?"

"We teach that sort of thing in the Academy, son," replied Turbo quickly. They were getting away from the key points, which was understandable since it was Matrix's father, but even so, he needed a report, not a discourse on the viability of nulls. "The system?"

"But Bob didn't..." Matrix paused, then shook his head. "There's tears all over the place, and we're trying to mend them manually, but it's time consuming. We could really use some help."

"Why hasn't Dot called? Mainframe is a much more central system since we helped get rid of Daemon," said Bob, an anxious note to his voice. "We would help... right, Turbo?"

The Prime Guardian nodded.

"I don't know for sure. She's got this idea of Mainframers doing everything themselves... But she also... she said she doesn't trust the Guardians. There's a lot going on, Bob. There's some kind of signal floating around the system that we haven't been able to fully analyze, there's the Alpha games, the— segmentation fault, you called it? We even had a game that disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Turbo frowned. "That's more than unusual. But if the system's hostile to us, we can't go in." He glanced over at Bob, then back to Matrix with a nod. "It's a rule we've put in place since Daemon. We did a lot of damage, and we're trying to mend hearts right now."

He paused and gave Bob a significant look, to which Bob nodded reluctantly. "I _could_ go," said the blue sprite. "Glitch and I could mend the tears. It's still my system. Sort of," he mumbled the last while looking down.

"Then it's settled. Bob will come to Mainframe, at least long enough to fix the tears," said Turbo. "And if he thinks we're really needed, two Guardians are enough for me to override the system's commander. The other Bob... he _is_ on our side about this, Matrix?"

"I'm not that much of a renegade. We talked to him before we talked to you." Matrix grinned. "Look, Bob... the sooner you can come, the better. These tears are going to cause some serious instability, if they haven't already. We need you."

"I'll be there after a sleep cycle." Bob and Matrix nodded at each other, and the call ended. "Mainframe needs me," he said. Turbo nodded with a bit of satisfaction, but it was short lived as Bob finished his thought. "I just wish _Dot_ did, too."


	6. A voice in the dark

Dot woke up in her office to the sound of a two-part chime. She felt exhausted. There was a blanket on her, which presumably Bob had put around her after she'd refused to go home. It's just that there was so much to get done.

"What I need right now," she said to herself, "is some energy."

"Is _that_ what you need, Ms Matrix?"

She spun around. That _voice_! That was... "Megabyte?" She didn't see him, but it had sounded like it was right over her shoulder. One of Mouse's old swords was leaning on her desk, so she grabbed it and began looking, carefully, around the office. "Show yourself, virus!" she demanded.

He had to be here. She looked under her desk, then in the little closet that held some of her other outfits. But... he wasn't there. Had she imagined it?

"A nightmare? Maybe what I really need is more sleep," she said.

She took a deep breath as the door chimed. Megabyte was gone. Defeated, deleted, and _not her problem_. Her problems consisted of tears, games, colored skies and weird signals. And, of course, as her eyes fell on the picture of her, her father and her little brother... the grief she couldn't allow herself to feel.

She opened the door and was taken aback. "Bob?" This wasn't the Bob-her-husband she might have expected. This was... was... she looked the sprite up and down. This was a Bob-with-Glitch, as opposed to a Bob-merged-with-Glitch.

"Hey, Dot. You know, cutting tears in two doesn't really work any better than hitting them with chairs." He smiled tentatively.

"Oh. I didn't know you knew about that..." She looked at the sword in her hand, then attached it to her belt. "I... I guess not."

"Enzo... well, Matrix, really... he told me about your father. I'm sorry."

"Thanks, I..." The pair were awkward. Neither knowing what exactly to say to the other. Dot finally decided on something to say to make sure they both knew where they stood. "I'm married now," she said softly.

Bob shrugged, and though he tried to make it look nonchalant, it was pretty clear he had some strong feelings about it. He barely looked like Bob now, degradation apparent on his uniform, face covered with silver marks, and she felt terrible just to say it to him. "Congratulations." He frowned, and she wondered if he thought that was what she was looking for in a response. "I'm sure you're both... happy."

As happy as this Bob was _not_. Dot looked down.

Maybe... maybe a part of Bob wanted Dot to feel unhappy, but the majority of his code just felt crushed as she looked away. He wanted her to be happy. He'd just always thought he'd be a part of that happiness. He shook himself. "There's a lot of tears out there. You should have asked the Guardians for help. You could have asked _me_ , you know. Mainframe's still my home system."

She looked up at him with her face still lowered. "I guess I wasn't sure if you'd still feel that way," she said softly. "Are you and Glitch... okay? Turbo said he didn't think you were going to make it. Bob... after our wedding, he told me the medics in the supercomputer said they thought you might be gone before..."

"I'm fine," said Bob with a little more force than necessary. "Glitch got upgraded, and... well, we're split, so I'm not fragmenting anymore." He paused. "You look kind of desaturated, though. Are you all right?"

Dot glanced at the wakizashi for a moment, thinking of the strangeness of hearing Megabyte's voice. She was just exhausted enough to be dreaming while she was awake. She shrugged and gave him a tired smile. "You know how I overwork, especially when there's a problem with the system. I guess I'm not sleeping very well." She took a breath and put on her game face. He was here to mend and defend Mainframe, so he needed to deal with the issues in Mainframe just like all the rest of the sprites. "Okay. Well. You're here, now. Do you think you can get on those tears?"

He looked at her for a moment more, and she just wanted to comfort him. He was Bob. They were _both_ Bob, that had been the problem from the start. She'd had to choose, and that choice had to hurt one of them. Maybe Phong's patronizing answer had been right, maybe it _didn't_ work, no matter how hard she tried to make it so.

But Bob just sort of smiled sadly. "That's my function," he said, and turned, and she was sure it was breaking her heart to see him reduce himself to nothing but that. "Hey Dot," his hand stilled on the door handle and he threw her a glance over his shoulder. "I know you're tired, and there's the whole thing with your dad and the problems with the system, but... you're happy with him, right?"

"Yes, Bob. I am."

He swallowed around a volt in his throat and nodded. "Right. Good," he said, walking out and letting the door close with a little click.

"Oh, yes, Bob, I am. Really, Ms Matrix?" Dot startled, then squared her shoulders. Megabyte wasn't here, and there was no way some nightmare voice was going to stop her from doing her duty to the system.

"I'll sleep when the crisis is over," she promised herself.

* * *

"Glitch, mend."

"Bob!" The blue sprite turned his head to see Matrix heading in his direction, but kept most of his focus on the bright, sparkling tear. "And Glitch! You're repaired!"

"Hey, Matrix." He paused to watch the static fade into the regular fabric of the system. He smiled as his keytool gave a greeting to the larger green sprite. There was a lot to get done for repairs of the system to be completed, but there was more than time enough to say hello to old friends. "Where's AndrAIa?"

"Oh, she's with the other Bob. With these old functions, it's a two sprite job to mend a tear-- one person to scan and watch for polarity shifts, and the other to actually input the parameters to the fixer." Matrix smiled as Glitch made some noises, apparently agreeing that it was a difficult task. "I managed to mend one of them on my own," he said proudly, "though I did almost got blown up in the process."

Bob frowned for a moment, then gave Matrix an exasperated smile. "Well, I'm glad you didn't get blown up. Honestly, I'd have thought you'd be the one with AndrAIa."

Matrix shrugged. "Ah, they both wanted to be cautious. Didn't really approve of me mending tears solo... but it's about time for some energy, and I thought maybe we could all get some together?"

Bob nodded. "I could go for an energy shake. And Glitch could use a power up, too. Not the Diner...?"

"Nah, we've been hanging out at Al's," replied the green sprite with a grin. "Come on," he said, and led the way towards the lower sectors.

By the time they got there, AndrAIa and Bob already had a table. Matrix slid in beside his lady love, which left Bob to awkwardly sit down beside Bob. The server came over and they ordered.

"So, what happened to your uniform?" asked the first Bob casually, his expression somewhere between smirk and curiosity.

"So, what happened to the system?" asked the second Bob in response, his expression particularly unamused.

The pair stared at each other for a moment, faces hardening competitively. Matrix and AndrAIa looked at each other for a nano or two. "We're all really glad you came back, Bob," said the female sprite, trying to diffuse the tension. "We've been having a lot of trouble with the Alpha games."

"And the segmentation fault." Matrix's eyes went down to the table in sadness, and both Bobs looked down.

"I'm sorry about your father, Matrix," said Bob, breaking the staring contest he was having. "Regular games usually force nulls out of the area, but we've observed that Alphas often don't have the same protection. Is that what happened to turn the sky red?"

"I didn't know that," said Matrix, eyes flickering to the other Bob in confusion. "I thought you didn't know what happened, Bob?"

"Well, not the specifics," replied the Guardian. "And the generality didn't seem relevant... it wouldn't fix anything." He shrugged dismissively. "The sky turning red didn't happen until after the game disappeared."

"Huh. I don't know what that means," said Bob. "Glitch, any ideas?" The keytool clicked, its equivalent of a shrug.

"We should be thankful it disappeared," said the other Bob. "The number of tears out there could cause a lot of problems if a game dropped on one of them."

"Yeah, but Bob and Glitch have managed to take care of a lot of them," said Matrix. The two blue sprites looked at each other warily for a moment. "We're down to only 40% of the tears from after the game crashed."

"That's true. Thanks. Bob." He paused. "You know, we're going to have to call ourselves something." He pointed at himself. "Bob, and..." he pointed at the version with Glitch. "Bob-Two."

"I don't think so," replied Bob-Two.

"I guess it doesn't matter if you're not staying long," said the undamaged Bob with a shrug.

"Oh, I'm sticking around. This is _my_ system," said the other.

"I think it's more _mine_."

"Well I can see you're doing a really good job, taking care of it."

"Oh, like when _you_ forced a _system crash_?"

"Hey, it _worked_ , didn't it? Megabyte left the whole system in shambles. Besides, I'd like to know how you'd have done better!"

"Well— I—"

"Warning: incoming game."

Both Bobs looked up at the sound. "Well, _that_ was just in time," said AndrAIa. Matrix nodded in agreement. "Come on, boys, you can defend the system, _then_ have lunch."

All four of them walked out and got on their zip boards find the location of the game, but were shocked to see what was happening when they did. _Two_ cubes were dropping, in opposite ends of the city.

"This is bad," said one Bob.

"Very bad," agreed the other.

* * *

"Mouse? My child, why have you called me directly?"

"AndrAIa sent me a bunch of data," she said without preamble. "And there's something you have to know..."

* * *

"Let's split up," said Matrix. "AndrAIa and I can take one game, and you two Bobs can take the other."

"Sparky, are you sure that's a good idea? I don't think they can work together."

The two Bobs glared at each other. "For the good of the system, I can work with him," said the pristine Bob. "Assuming he can even reboot. You're more used to playing with Matrix, and we need all the advantages we can get."

"Oh, I can reboot," said the Bob with the longer glistening hair. "And I've got Glitch. I'm more valuable in a game than you are."

Matrix rolled his eyes. "Great, you two go figure that out. We'll take the game in Floating Point, you two take the one in G-Prime. Okay?"

"Fine," they said at the same time.

AndrAIa looked like she wanted to say something, but Matrix shook his head at her. "They've gotta figure it out for themselves," he said, as they both zipped off toward the other game.

The two Bobs circled each other even as they headed toward the game. "Dot was right," said one of them. "We shouldn't have asked for any help from the Guardians."

"Are you kidding?" asked the other. "I fixed half the tears in Mainframe in a few microns, it would have taken you a minute with that old tech Phong's given you. Why's Dot suddenly against Guardians, anyways?"

"I don't know— I think she just didn't want _you_ around." Bob's hands clenched into fists and he made to reply to the accusation, but the other Bob was continuing. "Face it! All you brought her was deception. I read Phong's reports, you lied to her about your merge with Glitch, you lied about fragmenting, it's no wonder she doesn't believe it when you tell her you love her. At least _I_ just shut down. You?" He shook his head in disgust. "What happened to you in the web to turn you into _this_?"

The game came down over them, and they both dropped to the ground. "I lived a year without Mainframe or any of my friends. You had it easy, shutting down. You didn't do anything to fix what happened, you weren't even there. I can't figure out why Dot chose _you_. Reboot!" This Bob's new form was cartoonish, with a headset, a baseball bat and a pair of guns. His legs felt full of energy. Speed class. Good.

"You tried to delete yourself. What kind of Guardian does that? Mend and defend, remember? Delete and destroy is a virus' function; you can't do that to yourself. Reboot!"

"Delete myself?" Bob stared, knocked off of his train of thought. "That's not what I did."

"Yeah, it _is_. Doing the unexpected is one thing, but what you did... Glitch, gamestats," the other Bob said through the mask that had appeared on his face when he rebooted, and even though he wasn't wearing the keytool, it seemed to recognize the command as it clicked a few times. Bob shook his head, unsure of what to say for a few nanos, then looked down at the information Glitch was showing him.

"It's a game called Two Strong Weaknesses. Online, team-based battle royale style, win by capturing the enemy's flag and holding it for a set period... oh, no..."

"What now?"

"Matrix and AndrAIa are in here too. One game, two instances. If either of us win, the other team gets nullified. We can't let that happen. We have to make sure the User loses." He shook his head at the other Bob and turned away, looking in the general direction of the other game instance. Space might not line up perfectly, but there was often a correlation... "Well, you're version 2.0 now, so we might as well try. Glitch... can you get a signal to them?" The keytool spun around a few times, then made a static noise. "Guess not." Bob nodded to himself. "Let's get going, we need to find them before they try to win this thing." He looked over to where the other Bob had been, but saw only the smouldering end of a cigarette.

"Bob?"

* * *

"Ray and I came to this in-development system. The place is a wreck, and the remaining sprites and binomes try to stay out of the games entirely, but they've got plenty of information in their read-only archives. That signal you recorded when the game disappeared? It's called a Trap signal. Pauses a game, and comes back with a clone of another game." Mouse looked at Phong with a hard stare. "Y'understand what I'm saying, don't ya?"

Phong nodded grimly. "Two games appeared in Mainframe, half a millisecond ago. I believe, then, that the trap has been sprung."

Mouse looked down. "Then... there's something else you need to know," she said. "The trap signal... it needs acknowledgement from an admin level code. And based on the system logs you sent... I don't know why she'd do it, but..."

Phong closed his eyes, dreading what he would need to do next.

"I understand. I will have to quarantine her."

* * *

AndrAIa saw him first, as she threw an AI sprite off of her back and into a bush, then froze it with a freeze gun on her back. "Bob? Is that you?" Matrix glanced over, shoving a barrier between AndrAIa and another game sprite.

"It's me," he said, hitting the sprite over the head with his bat. "We have a major problem. Well, maybe two. We're in two instances of the same game, so if _anyone_ wins this game, the two of us in the other instance are going to get nullified."

"Gotcha, Bob. So what do we need to do? And where's the other Bob?" Matrix shot off a cannon, while AndrAIa jumped up on his shoulders and turned the playing field into a skating rink. Game sprites started sliding around, hitting each other.

"We have to stop the User rather than winning the game. And... that's the other problem. I don't know where he went." Bob grunted as he hit another of the sprites with his bat. "We were talking, and then he was just— gone."

"But if the User took him out, wouldn't they have taken out this Bob, too?" asked AndrAIa.

Matrix pushed his barrier, throwing a few more of the gamesprites onto the ice where they flailed about uselessly. "Yeah. So where did he _go_?"

"I've got a bad feeling about this," said AndrAIa.

Bob nodded. "Let's go get the User."

* * *

"Just keep monitoring, Specky," said Dot. She shook her head at the command console. "None of this makes sense."

"You simply lack the perspective to make it make sense, Ms Matrix. If you agree to work for me, you will have that perspective." Dot grit her teeth, wishing the voice in her head would shut up, or at least pick a sprite's voice. Even Hexadecimal would be better— no, no, nullify that thought. Hex would definitely be driving her mad.

"Dot... may I see you for a moment?"

"I'm really busy right now, Phong." She tapped in a few commands, and the console beeped at her. "Ugh. What now...?" She looked up to see Phong in the company of system security.

"For your own safety," said Phong, slowly and calmly, "I have locked you out of the system."

Dot blinked at him for a moment without understanding. "What do you mean?"

"You are in error, Dot."

"If you won't work for me, Ms Matrix, my minions will take _you_ out."

"What?" Dot's voice was soft, shocked, her eyes wide as she looked around at the binomes that were her friends. Phong spoke again, but overlayed onto the sound was Megabyte's voice.

"Ms Matrix, I am not a supervirus, thus I cannot _infect_ you. But those around you? Binomes have a much simpler code."

"But you... you're not here. You're not in the system. You can't be."

"Dot? With whom are you speaking, my child?"

She could hear the smile in his voice as system security— no, _his_ security— came towards her, their staves at the ready. They all looked a bit uneasy. "Don't you remember, I came to say hello this morning. Ah, but I was wearing a mask function, wasn't I?" The voice morphed suddenly. "Hey, Dot. Trying to cut through tears?"

She looked around the room, assessing her options.

She wasn't about to let him get her. She was a Matrix, she was a survivor, and she was _going_ to protect her system, even if she had to flee the Principle Office and find a way to take it back. Megabyte had failed when Bob was in the web, he'd failed when Enzo was in the games, and he'd fail again, as many times as necessary.

She knew the Principle Office, knew how it worked and how to move around it. Phong might have blocked off the main door, but the office behind her had a backdoor exit that she could use to flee. She might not have command access, but she had Mouse's sword still on her belt, and she had three sets of code that could change file permissions long enough for her to get away. After that, with Phong on their side, they'd still be able to track her through her PID... but there was one place where her signal would be impossible to trace amidst the chaos. She would have to stop to get her brother on the way, so that Megabyte couldn't use the little sprite against her, but that wouldn't take much time if they thought she was still here.

It was more than enough. She had a plan.

"All right, Phong. I don't know what this is about, but... I'll go quietly," she said, and she could see the relief on his old face. The security forces lowered their staves, then rasied them into their bind poses, looking happy that they wouldn't have to do anything to the sprite who had been their commander up until a few nanos ago.

As soon as she was sure they were all relaxed, Dot turned and ran, slamming a button to shut the door before slashing the lock, and making good her escape.

* * *

"I've found one of the two Users," said Bob into his headset. "He's headed towards the flags. You two should be able to intercept in about 30 nanoseconds, about 45 degrees."

"On it," came Matrix's voice.

From his position above the battle, Bob could see just about everything, including the two other sprites heading towards the User. His game format didn't have much in the way of hit points, but traversing the battlefield? Now that he could do.

"Got him in sight," came AndrAIa's voice.

"Take him down," said Bob. He looked back towards the field, scanning for the location of the other User. Instead, he saw something a little less expected. There was a scuffle happening at the flags. A lot of game sprites were lying there, bleeding out...

"Something's happening... I can't tell what. I'm going to check it out."

His legs were almost as fast as a zip board in this game, and if the stakes weren't so high, he'd be grinning about how quickly he could make it from his overwatch position to the top of a castle, where someone was grabbing the flag. It was a real _rush_.

As his feet stopped, he recognized what he'd found: the second User. "Hey, buddy. Care to dance?" He grabbed the form and spun it around only to find himself face to face with... himself. "Bob?" He let go, uncertain. "Hey, put that thing down, you're going to win the game!"

There was a smile on the other Bob's face, and suddenly a right cross knocked him off of his feet. "That's the idea, Bob," said the other sprite.

"What? No, you don't understand—" Bob sprung up, using his speed to his advantage. He had nanos to get the other Bob to drop the flag. "Matrix and AndrAIa—"

"Oh, stop pretending. You want to win so you can get Dot back. But she doesn't love you anymore." The other sprite grabbed him by the neck and rushed him against a wall. "And I'm tired of you trying to take her from me."

"Glitch..." His vision was dimming. What was happening? "Do something... anything..."

The keytool detached from Bob's armband just as the game called out the game over. The purple cube lifted away, and Bob found himself held above the ground by the better looking version of himself for a moment before the other sprite's arm let go, responding to a shock from Glitch.

He sneered at Bob, and moved his arm so he could speak to the keytool directly. "What are you doing?"

Bob coughed and stumbled to his feet. He looked out towards Floating Point Park. He couldn't see it from down here in the bowels of G-Prime, but he could imagine. "Matrix... AndrAIa..."

The keytool detached once more and returned to Bob. The code flowed back into him, his hair shortening and his uniform returning to a standard rendering. The other Bob writhed for a moment, but by the time he stopped...

The virus smiled at Bob, his teeth sickly sharp. "Ah, it seems my charade is at an end." Bob recoiled.

"What have you done?"

"I have taken my vengeance," Megabyte replied. "A family that tried to destroy me is now destroyed themselves." His arm shot out, and he grabbed Bob around the neck again. "And now, to take care of _you_ before I return to torment my wife." Bob's eyes widened as he tried to dislodge the hand around his throat. "Perhaps I will retake your code, Bob, and resume my pretense. Do you think she would enjoy that? The father, the overgrown _boy_... she could help me delete the undersized one next."

The Guardian was losing consciousness, could barely breath. If he didn't do something soon, he'd be deleted. "Narrow... beam..." It was enough for Glitch to take action, sending a laser-like burst of energy through Megabyte's hand, nearly severing it and forcing him to drop the blue sprite to the ground.

Bob tried to catch his breath, Megabyte tried to put his hand back onto his wrist.

Far above them, around the Principle Office, vid windows opened with their familiar chime. "This is a system-wide announcement. Due to some... issues... we are looking for Dot Matrix. She is considered to be unstable and dangerous. Please report any sightings to your nearest CPU personnel. Thank you!" The vid window closed.

Bob's face showed disbelief, but between one nano and the next, anger replaced it. "What did you do to her?"

Megabyte's face acquired a nasty grin. "Oh... Any number of things." Megabyte rushed at Bob, who called for a stasis field; Megabyte smashed through it; Bob flattened himself to avoid the oncoming viral load.

"EF gun," called Bob, and began firing as his keytool changed form. The virus ducked behind a building while Bob drew ever nearer.

"You know, Bob, I would be more worried for Ms Matrix were I you." He began moving, climbing up the building.

"You're _not_ me," said Bob angrily.

"Unstable code can do unstable things, and she and I have a sort of... connection." His voice echoed around the buildings.

Bob looked fired blindly around the edge of the building, then looked for himself. Seeing that the virus was not there, he scowled. "Glitch, scanner," he said, and saw the secondary image right on top of him as the virus jumped down on top of Bob. "Energy shield!"

Megabyte bounced off of the glowing golden orb that Glitch had formed, but the impact knocked Bob to the ground as well. "Oh, I don't think she'll delete the _boy_. It'll be so much more satisfying if it's _you_ , Bob."

He walked forward and kicked the sphere of energy off towards Floating Point, then turned and moved. There weren't many places a sprite could hide from the Principle Office, but none where she could hide from _him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Referenced game: Fortnite/Overwatch/TF2/generic capture the flags.


	7. Til Deletion Do You Part

Bob opened his eyes to see a light flicking back and forth. His head hurt. His whole _body_ hurt. But he raised his hand and swatted the light away. "Phong?"

"Bob. It is good to see you awake." The old sprite looked down at Bob's keytool. "What has happened, my young friend?"

"Megabyte." Bob took a breath as the memories came back at him. "He won the game, but we were connected to another instance... Did you find Matrix or AndrAIa in floating point?"

"No, my son." The old one looked down. "Dot has also gone missing. Mouse believes that she is, in some way, responsible for what happened. But I do not understand how that can be possible."

"I don't either," said Bob. "But... but he married her. He had access to her. He... User. I didn't protect her. I've failed her, and I've failed this city."

Phong's eyes widened as he took in the information. "How can that be? We scanned him, and his code matched yours! I would not have allowed Dot to marry a virus!"

"Trojan horse. I didn't recognize him either. If anyone should have seen him for what he was, it's _me_." His hand clenched itself into a fist. "I let everyone down, I got everyone..." He took a deep breath and shook his head. "It was an Alpha. Sometimes those don't nullify. Have you searched Floating Point?"

Phong looked down. "There were no sprites _or_ nulls in the area," he said. "We can... search again?"

Bob shook his head. "They'd want to be found if they were there," he said, more to himself than to Phong. "I can't save them, and my guilt doesn't matter. What matters is Dot. What matters is the system. What matters is what _can_ still be fixed. _Mend_ and _defend_." He looked at Phong suddenly. "I don't suppose you have a revert command, do you?"

Phong tilted his head. "This... is not the Supercomputer."

"I know," said Bob. The blue sprite closed his eyes, trying to figure out what the next step was. It was so much easier when Dot was around to plan for him, but maybe he could still make something up. "He said this was about vengeance. He said he wanted her to delete Enzo, or me, or maybe both. How he could make her do that, I don't know, but..."

"Then we must find her," said Phong. "But she changed the access codes when she ran, and we cannot track her PID."

"I need to tell Turbo what's happened," he said. "And then I need to find her."

* * *

Hexadecimal's throne room was the same as she remembered it. A large white dais, a golden chair covered with red fabric... the only thing missing was Hex herself. Dot counted herself lucky with that. If she'd been the healed Hex, the white version that called herself Dot's sister, she might have felt that she needed to report Dot to the CPUs. And if she'd been the random one, well... who knew what she'd have done. Turned Dot into a cookie? Put her in another mirror? She looked up and shivered, seeing one hanging up there.

"Okay, Enzo. We're safe for now," she said. There had been no way she was going to leave her little brother somewhere that Megabyte could get to him.

"This place is creepy," he said.

Dot collapsed in the chair. "I know," she replied, trying not to cry at the injustice of it all. The worst her little brother should have to worry about was a pop quiz in linear algebra, not a virus breathing down their necks."I just don't know what to do next," she muttered to herself. "If Megabyte could get access to everyone in the PO that quickly..." She took a deep breath.

If she was careful about it, she could make an outgoing call. If no one had thought about Enzo... _he_ would be the perfect way to get in contact with one of the sprites who'd been in the game without so much chance of giving her position away. She couldn't call outside the system, but if Matrix, AndrAIa or Bob were still out there...

"Enzo," she called. "I need you to try to get in touch with Matrix."

"Sis... why can't we justcall Phong?" She looked at him in despair, shaking her head. How was she supposed to tell the little sprite that the old one might be infected? He'd lost their dad twice in less than a year, from his perspective, and now to have Megabyte take over his surrogate grandfather...? Her inability to find a solution must have been visible enough to him, as he tried co comfort her for a moment, reaching up to hug her.

"Dot?"

She looked up, hopeful. It was the right voice, the right face looking at her. Enzo stood and ran over to the blue sprite who had just walked in, jumping up onto him. Bob grabbed him, ruffled his hair without letting the little sprite knock him over as he normally did. He looked very serious as he put Enzo down. "Dot, I don't think Enzo should be here."

"Nor do I," came Megabyte's voice. Bob didn't react to it, but Dot flinched, grabbing the small sword and spinning, trying to locate the voice.

"Dot? I'm going to call some CPUs to take Enzo back home, okay?"

"No," she said. What if Bob thought Phong was right? "Megabyte is in the system," she said.

"I know." Bob walked closer. "That's why we need Enzo to be somewhere safe."

" _Here_ is safe," she said. "The Principle Office is compromised."

Bob frowned, then nodded. She wasn't sure if he believed her, or was patronizing her, but he wasn't taking Enzo back there, and that was important. "If you say so, Dot. Enzo, just... stay close to me."

He kept walking forward, watching her carefully. He didn't trust her, she could see it in his eyes... She looked down and saw Glitch. She looked back up. This wasn't... it wasn't him. Which meant, this was the other one. The one who'd gloated that he'd visited her. Unless, unless he'd managed to get Glitch _from_ that faker. "Bob. When did you get Glitch back?"

Enzo looked over at him, curious. "You've got Glitch? You must be the real Bob!" Dot was unphased.

"The separation worked. I retrieved some of my code, which made me look like me again... I came to see you earlier, remember?"

"I remember," she said, her voice turning cold. She lifted the small sword between them. "Get away from my brother, Megabyte."

"What? Dot, I'm not—"

"Get away from him."

"Dot, put that down." Bob sounded exasperated more than anything, but she wasn't playing as she held the thing between them, threateningly. "Ah... Enzo, why don't you go over there." He took a step forward and she took one back, so he stopped. He tried to offer her a smile. "Okay, Dot. I'm really me. Let me prove it. Ask me anything."

She shook her head. "Oh, do go on, Ms Matrix. Ask something. What was the first thing he said to you? What did he cry out as he was sent into the web? Does he _love_ you? I know the answers to all those questions and more."

"Stop it!"

"Stop what?" Bob looked at her in confusion.

She shook her head. "What did I say to you on our wedding night?" His face fell instantly. "I knew it, you're not him. You're a fraud!" Bob shook his head.

"Ah, well. I suppose you're too smart for me, Ms Matrix."

"Dot, I'm sorry. It's my fault. I wasn't there when you needed me. I didn't even _know_ you needed me. You need to listen to me now, I—" He paused and looked over at the little sprite who was watching the scene unfold with confusion written over his face. "Enzo... cover your ears, okay?"

"Just stop!"

He walked closer to her, kept walking even when she reached the edge of the dais. "I can't do that. Dot, you didn't marry me. I won't call what that was a marriage. Megabyte tricked you. I don't know what he's done to you, but I can tell he's done something. You're not processing right, but I can help you. You've _got_ to let me help you. Please, Dot."

"You might as well drop that sharp stick, Ms Matrix. We both know you won't use it. You're too much of a coward to even try to stand against me. That's why you sent Matrix. And AndrAIa. And Mouse. You even sent your 10 year old brother to face me when you set up that firewall. But you can still work with me. Drop your weapon."

She shook her head, brandishing the sword and swinging it at Bob, who jumped back. "Put it down, Dot. Let me help you," repeated Bob. She swung again, but he had training, and some moves were almost automatic. His hand closed over hers and they struggled over it for less than a nano before he threw the sword away. "It's going to be okay, Dot."

"Premature," came Megabyte's voice, only this time they both heard it.

"Uh... Bob?" Bob glanced back at the little sprite in time to see Megabyte put his hand over the boy's face.

Dot looked over in horror. "Enzo? M... M... Megabyte?"

"There, there, Ms Matrix. I suppose it's over now. I really was hoping I'd pushed you far enough to put some effort behind deleting Bob. It seems as though it wasn't quite enough." The virus smiled. "If I'd had another second with her, I _do_ think she'd have deleted you without any additional inducement, Bob."

Bob pushed Dot behind him, letting go of her hand as he prepared himself to face Megabyte once again. "Enzo has nothing to do with this. Let him go."

The virus narrowed his eyes and ignored his words. "Ms Matrix, I know you want your family safe. Well, what's left of it. I'll make you an offer: Enzo's life for Bob's." She stared at him mute and still as a statue as he ran one of his claws across Enzo's face.

"You're sick," said Bob.

"You're sure, Ms Matrix? Perhaps just a little more, then." Megabyte smiled again, a lazy smile that was no less full of malice. "This is what I wanted... before the horrors of the war," the voice coming out of his mouth was Dot's, and Bob's jaw dropped. It was uncanny, it was terrifying. "Just you, and me, and Enzo... a family. I was just waiting for you to be serious about it." Bob could hear her fall to her knees behind him; more disturbingly, the sound of sobbing began to echo in the throne room. "Really, Ms Matrix," he said in his own deep bass again, "you ought to thank me. I helped you eliminate all of those variables that weren't there before the war. You might even think of it as a wedding present. Matrix, AndrAIa... _Father_." He gave a small laugh, obscene against Dot's hopeless cries. "All very nostalgic. Wouldn't you agree, Bob?"

Bob stopped thinking. Apparently, Megabyte didn't much care about deleting Enzo himself, as he tossed the little sprite aside when Bob rushed at him, preferring to push his claws out towards the blue Guardian. It was lucky for Bob that his keytool was paying attention; the energy shield Glitch created was the only thing that saved him from skewering himself on those pointed talons.

Instead, he slid against them, leaving Megabyte free to swipe his other arm against the Guardian's back. Three long, jagged lines appeared, a darker blue dotting against his uniform. "It seems you do understand rage, Bob?" The virus grabbed the Guardian and threw him against a wall."If only I'd been able to use that during my performance!"

Bob shook himself and launched once more against the virus, Glitch sporting a sparking battering ram that drove into Megabyte's abdomen. "This should have been between _us_. You had no _reason_ to bring her into it!"

Megabyte grimaced in pain, but grabbed Bob's head by his hair and slammed him down into the dais. White marble splintered everywhere. "On the _contrary_ , Guardian." He slammed Bob's head against the floor a few more times. "The brains of your operation had to be taken out!"

Megabyte pulled Bob up one more time, intending to slam him against the throne. Bob's arms moved together to slam back into Megabyte's abdomen, over and over, with Glitch sending an electrified pulse against the virus with each hit.

Finally, he managed to angle himself so that the hit went upwards, blasting into Megabyte's head. The force of it broke Megabyte's grip and pushed the virus through the air until he landed at the far end of the room. The virus snarled at Bob. "What did you do to her?" Bob asked once more against the background sound of her soft sobs, and Enzo's attempts at comfort.

Megabyte rushed forward and grabbed the Guardian by the neck and forced him against another wall, then leaned over him. "If you really want to know, Bob..." The virus whispered it into Bob's ear. "I am rather _proud_ of it. It took quite a bit of experimentation to get it right, almost our entire honeymoon: I cannot infect a sprite, but I can affect a code injection against one." Bob recoiled. "I can already see you want to remove my influence, Guardian." The virus smiled again. "But that requires you to survive in the first place."

"I wouldn't worry so much about that," came a rough voice from the entranceway. "Copland! Lasso!" Turbo's keytool let out a long line of light that looped around Megabyte's neck. He dragged the virus away from Bob, who landed on the floor awkwardly.

"Don't... delete him!" called out Bob.

Turbo shook his head, clearly not interested in listening to Bob on this. The look in his eyes showed man was definitely about to enact a quick delete command.

Bob needed to act quickly. "Mirror," called Bob, and Glitch sent a burst of energy that grabbed the mirror that hung far above the chamber, pulling it down so that it cut through Turbo's lasso light. Megabyte was pulled against against it. For a nano, it looked like it would simply break... but then, Megabyte was pulled through it.

His hands hit the surface of the mirror, but he wasn't getting out. He snarled. "Do you think this is over, Guardian?"

"Mute this thing," Turbo muttered to his keytool. "I told you to wait for backup."

The younger Guardian looked over at Dot. She'd gone silent again, probably trying to seem a little stronger in the presence of the older greying man.

"Bob." Turbo looked at the blue sprite with some compassion, but also with a fair amount of exasperation and exhaustion. "Matrix may not have gone to the Academy, but he _was_ something akin to a Guardian. We can't just let that go. You know we can't."

Bob looked at the virus. He was angry, furious. He might never be able to mend what Megabyte had damaged; would never be able to undelete what was gone. But he wouldn't be himself if he just _let_ them do it. He had fought the Guardians so long on this... he couldn't stop now. "I might need him to undo what he's done to Dot," he said finally. Megabyte would never help him, but it would buy him time on the matter.

Turbo took a deep breath, then nodded slightly. "All right, Bob. But this is coming with me to the Supercomputer. And I don't know how long we can keep it. Figure it out soon."

Bob nodded his agreement and walked over to where Dot and Enzo were, then sat down heavily. "Listen, Turbo... Could you take Enzo back to the Principle Office? I'd... like to talk to Dot alone."

The Prime Guardian looked at Bob for a moment, considering. "Hey, kid. This place is weirder than the interior of Daemon's Lair. Let's head out." He offered the boy his hand, and Enzo reluctantly nodded, then followed Turbo out of the throne room.

Bob looked over at Dot. He wasn't sure what to say, only that he wanted to talk to her. With Turbo gone, she'd pulled her legs up into her chest, her head down, curled into herself like a ball. "Dot? It's over."

She looked up enough to glance at him, then shuddered and looked down again.

"He's file locked. He can't hurt you."

She twitched and looked around the room wildly for a moment before starting to cry again. Bob let out a breath and scratched his head. They didn't train anyone in the Academy for this. Probably because viruses were usually deleted before they could decide to look for vengeance instead of power.

Was it arrogance that had led him to this moment? All those ideas of his, the grand experiment... but no. It had led to the net being saved. His ideas had been right, just... just... if the cost of saving the entire net was Dot...? But without saving the net, she'd be deleted, and...

He looked at her greyed out skin. He couldn't see her eyes, but he suspected they were dull, whether from tears or from Megabyte's interference. Code injection. Hard to mend at the best of times, easy to leave something behind. Usually happened after a run-in with a Code Warrior, not a virus.

"I'm sorry," he said after a bit. "I wasn't here for Mainframe... or for you... I should have seen him for what he was." He waited for something. Her anger, her despair, her guilt, _something_... He reached out a hand, but she didn't reach back for it. This scenario wasn't anything he'd ever imagined, and even his famed adaptability was failing him. He couldn't imagine any way through to her. "Please talk to me, Dot."

She shuddered again. "He should have deleted me," she said in a small voice, so unlike the Dot he was used to.

His eyes widened and he shook his head. "Don't say that. Please don't say that." She was crying again. This wasn't a Dot he understood, not really. No more than he'd understood her when he'd first come to Mainframe, but at least then, she'd been all _her_. He put an arm around her and tried to pull her close. She allowed it, which, he felt, was _something_ at least.

"I'm sorry, Bob. I ruined everything..."

"It's not your fault, Dot, it's mine. It's... it's his..."

She unwound a little, and her face pressed into his shoulder. "But... He's right, I chose him instead of you. I should have seen it. He had... plans, ambitions... You never..." Bob shook his head slightly. "What's wrong with me, Bob? Why can I hear him, if he's file locked?"

"Hear him? You can hear Megabyte?" Bob looked around, then felt sick. What had he injected? A simulation, like he'd put in the Core room? An alias? He had to remove it quickly before it could do even more damage from within. "I need your PID, Dot. My Guardian code should be able to repair yours."

She pulled back and reached for it, then stopped. "How do I know you're really Bob? What if he's right, what if he didn't get file locked at all?"

There had to be some other way to show her he was who he said he was. "Glitch: daisy wheels." The dais erupted in teal and yellow, reminding him a bit of Floating Point. He had to clear his mind of the memory that brought up, as now really wasn't the time, but he grabbed one and offered it to her. "It's going to be okay."

Dot looked at him. He could see a war in her eyes: fear, despair, hope. She didn't have to do it all herself, she just had to fight Megabyte's attack off enough for him to help her. "You can fight him. You're a Matrix. You're stronger than Megabyte." Bob removed his own icon, the gold and black duller under the strange lighting of Hex's lair. "Please."

She placed her icon in his hands.

* * *

"Unmute."

Turbo was in Phong's office, having taken it over after returning the child to the rest. He looked at the virus trapped in the mirror. Megabyte looked back, and though Turbo couldn't imagine he was actually disinterested, it was certainly what he showed in his expression.

"Bob's had some strange ideas over the years. Keeping you from deletion right now? Seems pretty random to me."

"Indeed?" Megabyte smiled. "My sister was much the same. Entirely random. Perhaps the net would have been better off without such random elements. I myself have always believed in a sort of viral _order_."

"Is that so." Turbo sounded unimpressed.

"A Guardian's lack of faith. You must have seen some benefit to my sister. You had her infect the entire net. Systems, peoples..."

Now _that_ was a bit of an intriguing thought. "Viruses?" Turbo looked through the mirror.

"Oh, yes. It changed us all," he replied.

"A virus infecting a virus. Maybe some of Bob's wild theories could pan out after all." Turbo paused, and his eyes narrowed. "You, though... you deleted one of mine. I can't just let that go."

The virus in the mirror shrugged.

"I could smash this mirror right now," he said. "You'd be fragmented, just like your sister. You wouldn't get to infect the net, of course."

"Indeed, you could." Megabyte smiled at Turbo. "Do it, then. Do you need more reason than the deletion of your compatriot? I suppose you didn't know Matrix very well. I watched the boy for a year before he was lost in the games."

Turbo frowned. "You _want_ me to destroy the mirror." He didn't trust anything a virus said, and something a virus wanted probably wasn't what was good for the net. "Now, why would you want that?"

"Bob must be something of a favorite for you. The Prime Guardian, coming here to a system on the edge of the network to help Guardian 452, a sprite who was lost for a year without anyone so much as contacting the system... who _failed_ his system so completely... Are you making it up to him? Trying to show him that he is a part of your grand design? I have to admit, such thinking is almost worthy of a virus."

"What are you playing at?"

"If I couldn't make _her_ delete _him_... the other way around is almost as satisfying. Shall I tell you how?"


	8. Just a whimper

"Dot? You've gotta wake up."

His code hadn't fixed her. He wasn't sure, but he was afraid he'd made things worse: she'd collapsed against him as he'd attempted to mend her code with his own. He'd picked her up and taken her out of Hex's old lair, but she still looked desaturated and ill under the red lighting from the sky.

He was sitting now, her still form leaning against him, just outside the bridge the linked Lost Angles and Mainframe together. "Please, Dot. I need you to wake up." His zip board lay beside him, unfolded, but he couldn't get the energy to stand, not with her like this.

It hurt too much.

He needed patching, but if she didn't wake up, what was the point?

"I've ruined everything," he said softly. Glitch clicked and beeped beside him, but Bob shook his head, unwilling, _unable_ to listen to the keytool blame the virus instead of the Guardian. 

* * *

"You're a monster," Turbo said. Megabyte's reply was a smile, smug and self-satisfied. "I should delete you anyway."

"You really should, yes," came the reply. "Go on, then. Destroy the mirror, fragment me. Complete my vengeance. Or set me free, so that I might try again. I can't say I mind either outcome."

Turbo shook his head. "Copland, mute that thing, then crunch it into a more manageable size. And get me an exact location on Bob."

* * *

He wasn't sure how long he'd sat there, trying to convince Dot to wake, when Turbo arrived. Bob glanced up briefly, but went back to his attempts to cajole the motionless sprite into some sort of wakefulness.

Turbo placed the package containing the mirror down on the bridge before he went over to Bob and Dot. His finger touched her icon, strangely animating between sprite, guardian and viral. This was not good. He didn't see a way to fix it, either. How that virus had come up with something like this, Turbo would never know. "He says he has some of her code in there. He says he's tied vital functions to his own."

Bob's face fell. "That shouldn't be possible."

He had Copland scan the female sprite and sighed. Yes, it was very much as Megabyte had said. "He had access to Guardian code, Bob. He perverted your mend functionality, used it to rewrite internal access functions, change inputs and outputs..."

Bob blinked a few times. "And when I tried to mend her... my functions recognized the Guardian code he used, and it... settled around what he did?" Turbo nodded gravely. "There has to be something we can do."

"There is." Turbo reached down and pulled Dot out of Bob's arms, laying her down on the street, then pulled Bob to his feet and nodded at the compressed mirror. "If we let him free, her functionality will return."

"But any attempt to put him into stasis... any attempt to rewrite _his_ core functionality... and hers will be gone."

Turbo nodded. "Which means you can't rehabilitate Megabyte. The experiment is over, Bob. It can't continue, it's too dangerous for the net."

"He only wants vengeance now, not the net. I can—"

"Bob."

"I can keep him contained—"

"Bob!"

"I'm not giving up on Dot!"

Turbo sighed and walked over to the package. Megabyte was probably right. If this had been one of the other Guardians, he'd never even consider it, but Bob's free thinking had led to stopping a cron supervirus. Mainframe was seen as heroic throughout the net, and Bob was a big part of that. So was Dot, so were AndrAIa and Matrix, rest their nulls. Surely these sprites, of all the sprites in the net, deserved an extra chance.

"There's got to be another way, Turbo."

He crossed his arms and looked away. If that sprite's functions failed... Bob would be broken. There was no way around that. He couldn't look at the blue sprite with this proposal. The probability was far too low, like asking for a precise non-representable value. "You could try a splitter function. With Glitch's upgrades, it might work to separate his code from hers. But after what happened when you and Glitch merged, and tried to separate... it would be dangerous."

"But she'd be free."

"That or deleted." Turbo turned to look at Bob. "And I can't let the experiment start again. If you can't put Megabyte into statis after the operation, Mainframe would have to go into low-power mode until the User runs a virus scan. We could set it remotely from the Supercomputer."

Bob looked at Turbo. "There wasn't a virus scan in this system for three years. We can't just go into low-power mode for years. Binomes will start to degrade."

Turbo nodded. "It's a risk. But the risk is low. If the scan happens within ten years, the chance of permanent damage, even to binomes, is... Copland?" His keytool beeped. "Less than 5%. And we've never seen any issues with five years of low-power mode." He paused. "We can evacuate anyone who wants to go, but you've always said Mainframers like to stick together. It's a gamble."

"You're asking me to risk the system for one sprite. And it might not even work."

Turbo shook his head, sadly. "Son, I don't have the answers here." He put a hand on Bob's shoulder. "It's an option. I think destroying that mirror and leaving Mainframe online is the better one."

Bob closed his eyes and thought as hard as he could. He thought about statistics and probabilities, he thought about what Dot would want, what Matrix might want for his sister, what Megabyte would expect. What would Phong say? Dot would surely give her life for the system... but this would be deleting two, not one, and maybe Megabyte _did_ deserve deletion, but Bob... Bob couldn't go against his code and still be Bob.

"I can't measure a life," he said finally. "I can only try to save it."

Turbo turned to look at Bob. "All right. Get your sysops to set up admin access for it, then prepare your system. I'll send some Guardians to mend the last of the tears and evacuate anyone who wants out. Copland?"

Bob attached the mirror to his belt, then knelt down beside Dot and picked her up while the older Guardian used his keytool to rope a tear in and turn it into a portal.

"Hey, Turbo..." Bob looked at the Prime Guardian. "Thanks. And... Stay frosty?"

Turbo closed his eyes for a nano, then looked back at Bob. "It's... been an honor, Bob."

* * *

"You want to _what?_ Bob, that was not your decision to make." Phong looked at him angrily.

"I know, Phong."

"There is another way. The readme of fate is long, and we will find another way."

Bob shook his head. "There's not." He lay the mirror on Phong's desk. Megabyte stared out from it. "If you won't let me do this, you might as well smash this mirror and delete Dot yourself."

Phong looked at it, then shook his head, looking at Bob with frustration. "My son... Has Mainframe not lost enough, that you ask me to choose this?"

Bob reached over and poked one of Phong's desk toys, watching as the balls moved from side to side without disturbing the ones in the middle. Phong looked at the Guardian, reading the despair.

"You... have no other solutions?"

"Dot's the one that came up with plans," he replied. "If you don't have one, this is all I've got." He caught a ball and placed it gently against the others. "He's won... a lot. I don't want him to win her."

Phong closed his eyes. Dot was like a granddaughter to him, and Bob had become something of a grandson. He also had lost much to the virus; all of Mainframe had. He could wish that things had been different, that choices were altered, but in the end, he did not have a way to change the past, or he might have stopped the web creature from attacking Hexadecimal. That, more than anything else, had been the destructive force that had led to the system's downfall.

He blinked slowly. A momentous decision. "I will give access."

* * *

It couldn't be done in the Principle Office, of course. That was far too dangerous. Bob and Phong decided that Dot's Diner would be the best place to repair Dot's code, far enough away that a breakout wouldn't allow any virus to stop the remote commands from the Supercomputer and close to something that Dot would find familiar, even if some of her code was irreparably damaged by the virus's modifications. Most of the remaining people of Mainframe were safely ensconced in the Principle Office now. When the power down happened— _if_ it happened— they would be in a safe place.

Dot's icon and the mirror were on a table; Dot herself lay in a mobile cot that had been brought from the Principle Office.

Bob could only wish that a medical team were here. He knew the basics of this, enough to fix most code, but this was going to be a lot more difficult than a simple patch.

"No time like the present. Glitch: Split and stasis."

Dot's icon and the mirror began spinning around each other.

There was one other who stood here, watching as Bob attempted the impossible: Mike the TV, who, it had to be said, wasn't particularly thrilled to be there. He was documenting the whole thing, sending a video stream to the Principle Office which was in turn being transmitted to the Guardians via a ssh link that Mouse had set up. She was with the Guardians and Ray in the Supercomputer.

Everyone held their breath as six streams of data separated themselves above the assembled group. Three appeared viral, the largest of the data streams. One was a glowing, golden thread. Bob reached out and pulled that to himself, but didn't integrate it into his code. The last two were the ones Bob was, for the moment, most interested in.

Those were Dot's code, spinning and cycling. One of the viral pieces kept trying to reach into it; Bob blocked it with his hand as he pulled the sprite's code to himself. He looked at it critically, trying to make sure it was all there before reintegrating it, using the golden thread to bind it.

Phong had given Dot a new icon; Bob grabbed it blindly, and, using his own icon as he had been taught long ago, pressed the data in. This was mending in its most primal state, taking code that had been damaged, removing the bad and repairing the good. He tossed the icon over to where Dot lay, and it spun a few times before landing on her.

He couldn't look away from the rest of the code that hung in the air, but he could hear her move. Mike wasn't as stuck in place. "Dot?" came the television's voice.

Bob could hear her moan behind him. He hoped she was okay, but his work wasn't complete.

Three circles of code hung in the air.

"Is it another web creature?" asked the television nervously.

"I'm not sure," said Bob. "He was in the web, and he did come back with more ability than expected... Glitch, analyze and merge..." The keytool beeped, and two of the code segments intersected, but the third stayed stubbornly by itself.

Turbo watched. He had a bad feeling about the whole thing. He was proven right when, nanos later, the mirror plunged out of the sky and the code disappeared. Glitch quickly went back to Bob's wrist.

In the Supercomputer, a button was pressed, and the video faded away from Turbo's eyes.

Mike had already started running. Dot, however... sat up and looked at everything as if for the first time. "Dot, get out of here." She didn't look like she was preparing to leave as a figure stepped out of the mirror, a long red leg followed by a mask-like face.

"Hex...? But... You were fragmented while saving the net."

"And I got better! Aren't you pleased?" The manic mask was replaced by the curious one as she looked around. "Now, Bob, Dot, you must tell me, honestly: did you enjoy my performance?" She danced over to Bob and grabbed onto him. "I was you!" She laughed, her face changing once again to a look of pride and madness. "It was the role of a generation!"

Bob pushed her away. "Are you saying..." He felt nothing so much as disgust as he realized what had happened. " _You_ had the trojan capabilities. You hurt Dot," he said shortly. "You _deleted_ Matrix and AndrAIa."

"Oh, no, Bob, don't be angry. That was Megabyte. You see, I infected him, but without my power, he was stronger than I." She waved a hand and her tear-faced mask showed, then another to show an amused look. "Why, _I_ was only _playing_." The running instruction set above Baudway stopped first as the system began powering down. Bob shook his head.

"Playing?" Dot had stood up and walked over. "What you did wasn't _playing_. I..."

The virus waved her hand over her face, showing a tear covered mask again. "Oh, Dot," she said, then waved again to display a dismissive face at the sprite. "Don't be so dramatic," she half-yelled.

"You were there. You saw what he did. To me. You called Welman _our_ father, you let him delete our father... to everyone! And you were _playing_?"

"Dot, back off, she's unstable again."

"Well, so am I!" Dot swung a fist at the virus, connecting only because Hexadecimal had turned to look at Bob. The red-clad virus turned to look at Dot, her face now sporting the mad mask she often wore when on her most damaging rampages.

Dot rose up into the air as Hexadecimal raised a hand. "Oh, don't blame me for your mistakes, Dot—"

Bob stepped in between them to stop the confrontation from escalating, grabbing Hex's hand so that Dot fell to the ground behind him. Kits was powering down, the eight ball gently landing on the apartment building, falling, and rolling off into the distance. He just needed to distract her. "Hex, she's just upset. Why don't you let me help you? I can fix you again."

"But I don't want to be _fixed_ , Bob. It's something you've never understood about me..." Her hand waved and she looked sad again. "I don't want to change for you, my love." An amorous mask appeared. "I want you to love me as I am!"

"Love _you_?" Dot had recovered and was pushing Bob out of the way. "No one worth a chance at love could do what you did—"

"Dot, are you trying to get deleted?" He put himself between Dot and Hex again. "Hex, look. The system's powering down. We can't stop it. Don't you think you'd be more comfortable resting in Lost Angles?"

She looked around. "I could bring you with me. I could keep the power on for just the two of us..."

"No, no, Hex, I... I have to take care of Dot and Enzo. That's how things work in Mainframe, right?" He smiled hopefully at her.

"Oh, I suppose you're right." She backed away from him. "Wouldn't want to upset the status quo..." Between one nano and the next, the virus had disappeared.

He shook his head and turned. "Dot... are you all right?"

She looked at him in disbelief. "No, I... well, I'm not hearing Megabyte, but... Bob, he... I..." She didn't have the vocabulary to express what had happened. Bob was almost upset to know that he _did_.

"Dot, I know, I can't undo any of that, but I—"

"Bob, what you said about the system shutting down... is that... real?"

Bob scratched the back of his head and walked over to her. "I made a deal with Turbo. I could try to save you, but if I couldn't keep the situation handled... look, it's not a full shut down, just low-power mode. We'll probably have enough energy for a day's processing every year. It's not ideal, but it'll keep Hex in check."

Dot laughed. "Bob, Hex pulls her power directly from the PSU. Nothing but a full core shutdown would work on her." Bob looked over at Lost Angles, feeling disturbed by her laughter as much as her statement. "Did Turbo not tell you that?"

"Well, _Turbo_ thought we were dealing with Megabyte, not..." He bit his tongue as Dot flinched at the name. "Dot..."

"I'll... figure out how to be okay," she said, turning away from him. "You know me. I just have to come up with a plan."

Floating Point was powering down, even from here he could hear the fountains sputtering off. "I _do_ know you. A plan for everything, even the things I think you shouldn't plan for, so... you can _plan_ on seeing me around." He smiled, but it faded. The pain in her stance was so... raw. He wasn't sure anything could touch it. "Dot... I want you to know that I love you." She didn't say anything. "It's okay if you don't," he added quickly. "If you can't..."

She stood there for a moment, just breathing quietly. The lights in Beverly Hills were flickering off, and she turned. Her eyes widened, mouth dropping soundlessly.

"Enough of this," came the voice. "I will delete you _both_."

He raised his arm as he turned, Glitch forming a shield for him before he could even think of it. Megabyte's claws still bit through his armor and blasted him through the air. He hit the Diner, the letters falling off the roof.

Megabyte headed toward Dot, who stood as still as could be. Bob wasn't going to let it happen. "You're fighting me," he called out, sending a stream of energy into the virus, enough to take his attention.

A swing of a huge fist. A block by his shield. A tentacle— now that was unexpected! A rectangle pulled from a building. Dot fled to the Diner, but managed to catch Bob's eye, pointing down.

So that's where he and Megabyte went. The battle raged even as the sky darkened, and they went further and further down into the depths of the system. G-Prime, and still further, passing through the streets emptied of binomes, there was no one in these darkening corners of the system to cheer either side.

In the deep dark, somewhere further down that even sector 31, they panted. The were illuminated only by the twin glowing orbs of Megabyte's eyes, and the occasional flashes of light as Glitch transformed. Glitch was flickering, too, unable to keep up with RAM shields and energy batons.

Still, Bob fought, rolling out of the way when he could, taking glancing blows when he wasn't quite fast enough. "You can... feel it... can't you?" Bob's words were those of an exhausted sprite, spoken with exaggerated pauses between each as he tried to keep his breath. "The power... down here... it's gone... completely..."

"You... will not... defeat me," said Megabyte. His own words were slow and tired, but each word was puntuated by another swipe of claw, another thrown brick. "I will not... rest... until you... are gone. _Ashes..._ will not... remain..."

"Takes more... energy... for a virus... than a sprite," said Bob. "You're not... like... Hex. And I think... you're..."

The virus swiped a wearied claw at him again, and Bob rolled away, sluggish but still just a bit faster than Megabyte. The virus pounded his fist down into the ground, his eyes dulling to black.

"Out... of power."

Bob panted there for a few nanos, waiting to see if the virus would wake, then slowly, carefully made his way back topside. The upper levels, closer to the PSU, would have more power, and one day, the system will come back online.

It's the only thought on Bob's mind.

* * *

There is little communication with the powered down system. There is an automatic network timer that receives pings, and an automatic response, but that is all. In Mainframe, the clocks roll on. The roads do not.

Years pass.

In each year, the sprites at the top of the system find enough power for a momentary surge of processing, a second here or there. Bob, as a Guardian, is able to process a little bit more. Hex has rather more than that, which means much of Dot's limited uptime is used to come up with plans for Bob to limit the virus. Hex is by herself, after all, which means she's bored, and a bored Hex is a destructive Hex.

Down in the depths, where the light and the power are weakest, Megabyte might as well be entombed.

A decade passes, and another.

The processing speed is slow. No one ages, though Phong sometimes looks at the network time and adjusts it. He once thought himself as old as the network. He wonders now if he might be older.

It's nearly year twenty when the sprites of Mainframe open their eyes to see the sky turned blue instead of grey. Megabyte speeds away, along with some new friends, and while Dot organizes a response to the hole in the sky, Bob tries to contact the Supercomputer to learn more of the new Guardians he's met.

There is no answer.


End file.
